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The North-Eastern Boundary. 



BY ISRAEL WASHBURN, JR. 




ARTICLE I. 



The North-Eastern Boundary. 



Bead befoee the Maine Historical Society, at Port- 
land, May 15, 1879, 



HON. ISEAEL WASHBUEN, Jr., LL.D. 




£ 



^ 



v 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 



I shall read yon, this morning, a chapter of concessions, sub- 
missions and humiliations by which the otherwise fair record of 
American diplomacy has been dimmed and stained. 

And I shall do this, not to cast reproach upon the memory of 
any of the actors in the deplorable business, whose history cul- 
minated, if it did not close, in the so-called Ashburton Treaty, 
a work of which the indulgent criticism of the most friendly 
commentator might be borrowed from Sheridan, who, speaking 
of another convention, said, " It was one of which, although 
some were glad, nobody was proud."' Nor shall I do it with 
the expectation that anything said or written by me, or by any 
one at this time, can avail aught towards a correction of the 
errors and mistakes of the past. But rather in the thought 
that a paper which may serve in some measure to keep the 
history and the lesson aliye for purposes of warning, of counsel 
and of suggestion in the future, will be neither unworthy nor 
unwelcome ; and, I will add, with the further impression, that 
it will not be wholly uninteresting or unprofitable to the pres- 
ent generation to learn something more than, as a general rule, 
those who compose it know of the particular history of the im- 
portant, protracted and imbittered controversy which preceded 
that settlement. 

And, besides these considerations, I have sought a personal 
gratification in an opportunity to express my sense of the debt 



4 THE NOETH-EASTEEN BOUNDAEY. 

due from the people of Maine to those faithful magistrates, who, 
in no hour of pressure or of alarm, allowed, for a single moment, 
the honor of the State, or her material interests, to be compro- 
mittecl by any action of the commonwealth over whose affairs 
they presided. Of Enoch Lincoln, Edward Kent and John 
Fairfield it could be said with peculiar force and propriety, in 
the words of Sir Walter Scott's tribute to Fox, they 

" Stood by their country's honor fast, 
And nailed her colors to the mast." 

It so happened in the history of the negotiations that upon 
these men rather than upon any other of our Governors, fell 
the chief weight of responsibility, and the most imperative de- 
mands for decisive action. Nor should I pass from this grate- 
ful duty without some reference to two gentlemen upon whose 
patriotic and ardent interest in, and thorough and perfect 
knowledge of, the questions involved, in all their aspects and 
relations, these functionaries always and safely relied. I refer 
• to Col. John G. Deane, of Ellsworth— who in his later years was 
a resident of Portland — and to the Honorable Charles S. Daveis, 
also of this city. 

On the afternoon of the 20th of September, 1875, I left 
Edmundston, on the St. John River, by the fine military road — 
constructed at great expense by the British government a 
quarter of a century before, and following, in the main, the 
route traveled by Lord Edward Fitzgerald in 1788 — leading 
from the river St. John to the St. Lawrence. "When, at two 
o'clock the next morning, the stage reached a point twenty-six 
miles south of the latter river, although it had been raining for 
several hours, the snow was more than a foot deep, and I was 
informed that three clays before its depth was more than two 
feet ; and here I said, without doubt, on this elevation, fifteen 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 5 

hundred feet above tide-water, are the " highlands," of which I 
had read so much in the years preceding the treaty of Wash- 
ington. For, although that treaty, sometimes called the Ash- 
burton Treaty, had been concluded thirty -three years before (in 
1842), the leading facts which its discussion had elicited, or 
which had been brought out in the years preceding, in the 
correspondence of our Governors, and in legislative reports, 
were too deeply written upon my memory not to be at call at 
any moment. But when on a clear, bright August day, in 
1877, I came from the St. Lawrence, at Eiver Du Loup, over 
the same road to Madawaska, after a steady general ascent of 
some ten miles, a comparatively short descent brought the .mail 
coach (in which I was traveling) to a stream which my com- 
panions said was a branch of the river St. Francis, and sixteen 
miles from the St. Lawrence, I knew that we were, if only the 
treaty of 17S3 had been respected, within the limits of the State 
of Maine — for the St. Francis is one of the rivers whose waters 
descend to the Atlantic Ocean — and had been within them since 
our journey had passed the fifteen miles bourne from the river 
St. Lawrence. 

The high ground, which, on the preceding journey, I had 
mistaken for the main highland range, was but a spur of it, and 
the true dividing ridge was ten miles to the northward. It 
was interesting to notice, on this bright day, how plainly 
marked and impossible to be mistaken was the treaty boundary 

Xever was there such a history of errors, mistakes, blunders, 
concessions, explanations, apologies, losses and mortifications on 
the one side ; of inconsistencies, aggressions, encroachments,, 
affronts and contempts on the other, as that which has respect 
to this boundary question ; and hi the calm of this day, when 
all direct, practical interest in it has ceased, and the sense of 
wrong and indignity has slept for more than a third of a cen- 



6 THE NOETH-EASTEKN BOUNDARY. 

tury, it is impossible for one to read it with anything like com- 
posure or patience. 

To those statesmen and writers of other countries, who have 
represented the United States as arrogant, uncomfortable and 
domineering, I would commend this tale of the sacrifice of 
northern Maine, as likely to afford them great, if not endless 
comfort. 

Article two of the Treaty of Peace, concluded at Paris be- 
tween Great Britain and the United States in 1783, so far as 
respects the question of the north-eastern boundary, is as follows : 

" From the north-west angle of Nova Scotia, to wit : that 
angle which is formed by a line drawn due north from the 
source of the St. Croix Paver to the highlands, — along the said 
highlands which divide those rivers that empty themselves into 
the St. Lawrence from those which fall into the Atlantic Ocean, 
to the north-westernmost head of Connecticut Eiver." 

This is the northerly line ; the easterly is described :— 

" East, by a line to be drawn along the middle of the river 
St. Croix, from its mouth in the Bay of Fundy to its source, 
and from its source directly north to the aforesaid highlands 
which divide the waters that fall into the Atlantic Ocean from 
those which fall into the river St. Lawrence, comprehending all 
islands within twenty leagues of any part of the United States, 
and lying between the lines to be drawn clue east from the 
points where the aforesaid boundaries between Nova Scotia on 
the one part, and east Florida on the other, shall respectively 
touch the Bay of Fundy and the Atlantic Ocean, excepting such 
islands as now are or heretofore have been within the limits of 
the said Province of Nova Scotia." 

This language seems to be too plain to admit of dispute, and 
yet under it four questions have arisen between the parties to 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 7 

the treaty : First, as to the river St. Croix ; second, as to which 
of the affluents of the St. Croix, was the source of that river 
within the intention of the treaty ; third, as to the islands in 
Passamaquoddy Bay; fourth, as to the north-west angle of 
Nova Scotia and the highlands that divide the rivers that fall 
into the Atlantic Ocean from those winch empty themselves 
into the St. Lawrence. And all of them have been decided 
against the United States. 

I propose a brief examination of each. 

I. The first question that arose was in regard to which of 
three rivers falling into the Bay of -Fundy was the St. Croix 
contemplated by the treaty. The question was plain, and easy 
of solution. These rivers had all been known and described at 
some time by the name of St. Croix. The most easterly had 
been called also the Magaquadavic; the intermediate the 
Schoodic ; the most westerly the Cobscook. That the first named 
is the St. Croix of the treaty, is so plain, I trust, that but few 
words will be needed for a clear understanding of the case. 

Soon after the treaty of 1783, the inhabitants of Nova Scotia 
(that part which is now New Brunswick) were found occupy- 
ing, and claiming as British subjects to hold the territory be- 
tween the Magaquadavic and the Schoodic Eivers, and particu- 
larly that near the present town of St. Andrews. Massachu- 
setts objected, claiming the territory as her own, and made 
complaint to Congress of these encroachments, and was by the 
latter body requested to cause inquiry into the facts to be made. 
In pursuance of this solicitation, it appointed a commission, of 
which two members, Generals Knox and Lincoln, visited Passa- 
maquoddy in the year 1784, and on the 19th of October of that 
year, made their report to the Governor of Massachusetts. In 
this report, they say : 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 

" They beg leave to inform your Excellency that a very consid- 
erable number of British subjects are settled at a place called St. 
Andrews, on the eastern bank of the river Schoodic, which, in the 
opinion of your commissioners, is clearly within the limits of this 
State. 

" By your Excellency's leave, they will recite a short state of 
facts on which this opinion was formed. 

" There are three very considerable rivers which empty them- 
selves into the bay Passamaquoddy, which is five to seven leagues 
wide. The eastern river falls iuto the bay about a league from the 
head of it, and perpendicular to the eastern side ; the middle river 
falls into the bay far on the westerly side of the head of it, ana in 
a direction parallel therewith ; the western river falls into the bay 
about six leagues from the head of it on the westerly side, and 
nearly perpendicular to it ; all of which in late British maps are 
called St. Croix. The first is by the Indians called Maggadava, 
the second Schoodick, the third Cobscook. 

"From every information the subscribers could obtain on inquiry 
of the Indians and others, the eastern river was the original St. 
Croix. This is about three leagues east of St. Andrews, where the 
British inhabitants have made a settlement. Soon after the sub- 
scribers received their commission, they wrote to Mr.. Jay request- 
ing him to give them information whether the Commissioners for 
negotiating the peace confined themselves in tracing the bounda- 
ries of the United States to any particular map, and if any one, to 
what ? Since their return they received his answer, mentioning 
that Mitchell's map was the only one that the commission used, 
and on that they traced the boundaries agreed to. 

" On this map two rivers were laid down ; the western was called 
thereon the Passamaquoddy, and the eastern the St. Croix." 

It is to be observed that the Passamaquoddy is the river at 
other times called the Schoodic. 

The Commissioners also say, " The subscribers further repre- 
sent that they find in the maps of a quarto volume published 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 9 

in Paris in 1774, from Charlevoix's voyage to North America, 
made in 1644, two rivers delineated at the head of the bay of 
Passamaquoddy, the western of which is called Passamaquoddy, 
and the eastern St. Croix." 

The westernmost river, the Cobscook, is much smaller than 
either of the others, and is not laid down on all the maps. 

But as to the fact that the true St. Croix was east of the 
Passamaquoddy — otherwise called Schoodic Eiver — there seems 
to be no doubt. Whatever doubt might possibly have other- 
wise existed is wholly removed by the testimony of Surveyor 
Mitchell, given in an affidavit on the 9th of October, 1784, as 
follows : 

" The subscriber, an inhabitant of Chester, in the State of New 
Hampshire, voluntarily makes the following declaration, to wit : 
that I was employed by his Excellency, Francis Bernard, Esq., 
Governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, in April, 1764, in 
company with Mr. Israel Jones as my deputy, Mr. Nathan Jones 
as commanding officer of a party of troops, and Captain Fletcher 
as Indian interpreter, to repair to the Bay of Passamaquoddy to 
assemble the Indians usually residing there, and from them to 
ascertain the river known as the St. Cro'ix. We, accordingly, 
assembled upwards of forW of the principal Indians upon an 
island then called L'Atereel, in the said Bay of Passamaquoddy. 
After having fully and freely conversed with them upon the 
subject of our mission, the Chief commissioned three Indians to 
show us the said river St. Croix, which is situated nearly six miles 
north, and about three degrees east of harbor L'Tete, and east 
north-east of the bay or river Schoodick, and distant from it about 
nine miles on a right line. The aforesaid three Indians, after 
having shown us the river, and being duly informed of the 
nature and importance of an oath, did in a solemn manner depose 
to the truth of their information respecting the identity of the 
said river St. Croix, and that it was the ancient and only river 



10 THE NOETH-EASTEEN BOUND AEY. 

known among them by that name. We proceeded conformably to 
this information in our surveys ; and, in August following, I de- 
livered to Gov. Bernard three plans of the said river St. Croix 
and the said Bay of Passamaquoddy." 

This statement of Mitchell is confirmed in every respect by 
the deposition of Nathan Jones, given March 17, 1785, who 
states that he was appointed by Gov. Bernard in 1764, com- 
mander of a party to explore the woods and view the rivers, 
bays, &c, to ascertain the river St. Croix dividing the Province 
of Massachusetts Bay from Nova Scotia, and to perform a sur- 
vey thereof. He said the river " St. Croix was then known as 
the Maggacadava." 

It must be remembered that in 1764, when this survey and 
these plans were made, Massachusetts Bay and Nova Scotia 
were both Provinces of Great Britain, and that the object of 
Gov. Bernard, as a faithful servant of the Crown, was to find 
and determine the true line. He had no interest to do anything 
else. He appointed his Surveyor and other officers : they made 
their report (which in respect to this line was in conformity 
with the map of John Mitchell made eighteen years before), 
and he accepted and acted upon it ; and from that date to the 
time of the treaty, the line so foun^ was the established, the 
recognized, and the undisputed line between these Provinces. 
Thus by the treaty of 1783, all that then belonged to Massa- 
chusetts, all that did not belong to Nova Scotia, was ceded to 
the United States. The river St. Croix, dividing these Provinces, 
had been ascertained, and declared in the report of 1764, as it had 
also been laid down on the map used by the Commissioners 
themselves. The question was settled. 

It has been seen by the reports of Generals Knox and Lincoln 
that Mitchell's map (although other maps were before them) 
was the only one " used " by the Commissioners when the treaty 



THE NOETH-EASTEEX BOUNDARY. 11 

was made, and that the line was drawn thereon. Not only is 
there the testimony of Mr. Jay to this effect, but there is also 
that of John Adams. "Writing from Anteuil, near Paris, October 
25, 1784, to Governor Cushing, he says : 

"We had before us through the whole negotiation, several maps, 
but it was Mitchell's map upon which we marked out the whole of 
the boundary lines of the United States ; and the river St. Croix 
which we fixed on, was upon that map nearest to St. John ; so 
that in all equity, good conscience and honor, the river next to St. 
John's should be the boundary. I am glad the General Court are 
taking early measures, and hope they will pursue them steadily 
until the point is settled, which it may be now amicably ; if neg- 
lected long, it may be more difficult." 

Nor does the testimony stop here. Dr. Franklin was one of 
the Commissioners by whom the Treaty of Peace was negoti- 
ated, and on the 8th of April, 1790, in a letter to Mr. Jefferson, 
he writes : 

" I can assure you that I am perfectly clear in the remembrance 
that the map we used in tracing the boundary was brought to the 
treaty by the Commissioners from England, and that it was the 
same as that published by Mitchell twenty years before. Having 
a copy of that map by me in loose sheets, I send you that sheet 
which contains the bay of Passamaquoddy, where you will see that 
part of the boundary traced. I remember, too, that in that part 
of the boundary we relied much on the opinion of Mr. Adams, who 
had been concerned in some former disputes concerning these terri- 
tories. * * * That the map we used teas MitchelVs map, 
Congress were acquainted at the time by letter to their Secretary 
of Foreign Affairs, which I suppose may be found upon their files." 

One would suppose that upon this record, nothing could be 
more clear and certain than that the river now called the Mag- 
aquadavic, was the true St. Croix that divided the Provinces of 



12 THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 

Massachusetts Bay and Nova Scotia. It was purely a question 
of fact, not of convenience or argument. Did Messrs. Jay, 
Adams and Franklin state the facts in the letters that have 
been quoted ? That they did has never, to my knowledge, been 
disputed. One will be curious to learn upon what plausible or 
possible grounds it could be claimed that the Schoodic, or Passa- 
maquoddy, was the St. Croix Eiver agreed upon and marked by 
the Commissioners as the treaty river. 

In the first place, no sooner had the treaty been ratified than 
the British Government changed the ground on which it had 
established its claims against the French, and adopted that of 
France. So that Mr. Jay, our Minister at London, was well 
justified in the prediction made to Mr. Randolph, our Secretary 
of State, in a letter written November 19, 1794, in which he 
said: 

" In discussing the question about the river St. Croix before the 
Commissioners," (Commissioners had at this time been agreed upon 
by the treaty of 1791, known as Jay's treaty, for determining the St. 
Croix), " I apprehend the old French claims will be revived. We 
must adhere to Mitchell's map. The Vice President " (Mr. Adams) 
" perfectly understood this business." 

In pursuance of the 5th article of this treaty of 1794, a com- 
mission, consisting of Thomas Barclay, David Howell (English- 
men), and Egbert Benson (American), was appointed to decide 
the question, " What river was the true St. Croix contemplated in 
the treaty of peace, and formmg a part of the boundary therein 
described ? " 

In the argument made by the British agent before these 
Commissioners, it was contended first, that by an Act of Parlia- 
ment, in the year 1774, a line between Nova Scotia and Massa- 
chusetts Bay was recognized which made the Schoodic Eiver 
the boundary between these Provinces. 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 13 

It will be observed that even if it should appear that the 
Schoodic was recognized as the St. Croix, or as a St. Croix, by- 
Act of Parliament in 1774, that that fact could in no way 
affect the other and controlling one ; that the Commissioners 
decided that the Magaquadavic was the St. Croix which was to 
form the boundary, and traced it as such upon the official map. 

But this point does not seem to have been greatly relied 
upon. The main contention was really an appeal to considera- 
tions of convenience and accommodation. The agent exerted 
himself to maintain that the American construction would 
carry the line to within a short distance of Fredericton, and 
would, by separating the sources of certain rivers running into 
the Bay of Chaleurs from their mouths,, produce such incon- 
venience that it could not be supposed that such a line was in 
the minds of the parties who negotiated the treaty. But, when it 
is considered that the line from the source of the St. Croix, as 
decided by these Commissioners of 1794 themselves, crosses 
the same streams that fall into the Bay of Chaleurs, as well as 
the river St. John, a river which falls into the Bay of Fundy, 
separating its source from its debouchure, the assumption falls 
to the ground. It is employed, however, to prove that as the 
parties would respectively wish to secure within their own 
limits the entire course of the streams which had an outlet 
therein, they would fix upon that river as the true St. Croix of 
the treaty, which would most nearly compass this desirable 
end. 

That this consideration had no practical weight with the 
Commissioners by whom the treaty of peace was made, appears 
not merely from the fact already stated, that the line, did divide 
the sources of several important rivers from their m< tilths, but also 
from the fact that the north-west angle of Nova Scotia (which, 
by the treaty, was the north-eastern angle of the United States) 



14 THE NOETH-EASTEEN BOUNDAEY. 

was known by all the parties to the treaty. It was a point on 
the southerly border of Canada, and that border was, and long 
had been, fixed upon a range of highlands well defined, and 
situated but a short distance south of the St. Lawrence Eiver. 
The angle was formed on this border by a line drawn due north 
from the source of the river St. Croix. That this angle on the 
southerly boundary of Quebec (Canada), was so located that a 
line to it from the river St. Croix, whether that river was the 
Schoodic or the Magaquadavic, would intersect rivers which had 
their mouths within British territory, was known to the Com- 
missioners as a fact that was beyond question. Everybody 
knew it ; nobody doubted it. To found an argument from it 
for a change of the river from the one agreed upon, implies a 
belief on the part of the British agent that the United States, 
in the exhausted condition of the country, would stand a great 
deal of injustice before going to war again. 

Great Britain, as has happened several times since, and nota- 
bly in the late fisheries controversy, had the good fortune to be 
strongly represented on the St. Croix Commission, while the 
side of the United States was but feebly and inadequately sup- 
ported ; and so in 1798, the former succeeded in obtaining a 
report declaring the northerly branch of the Schoodic to be the 
boundary line. She had claimed the westerly branch, and all 
her arguments applied to that line, and were based on grounds 
that rendered the acceptance of a more easterly branch inconsist- 
ent and entirely inadmissable. She had demanded a line that 
would have brought the Province of New Brunswick to near 
the Passadumkeag Eiver, and which would have nullified or 
contradicted every essential provision of the treaty, and she 
gained (doubtless all that she ever expected) a compromise line. 
The plain provisions of the treaty and all its undisputed history 
were set aside. 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 15 

By this settlement, which covered the only question as 
to the boundary, then in dispute, and which proceeded all along 
on the mutual understanding that the line north of the source 
of the St. Croix, was where the United States claimed it to be, 
the State of Maine lost a strip of territory from fifteen to 
twenty miles in breadth, and one hundred and seventy-five 
miles in length, including all that is west of the Magaquadavic 
Eiver, and all that is west of the river St. John from a point 
near the Meductic rapids some twenty miles below Woodstock, 
embracing that fine town and the unrivalled farming tract above 
and below it on the west side of the river St. John, as well as 
an extensive territory east of the river. 

II. But our bad fortune did not stop here. The Commis- 
sioners, having agreed upon the river, decided that its source 
was in what is now known as Bound Lake, the same, I suppose, "" 
that is laid down as North Lake on Greenleafs map of 1815 ; 
but, when they came to make their report, for reasons which I 
have never been able to learn, substituted Cheputnecook for 
Bound Lake, and thereby gave to New Brunswick a tract of 
country of the average breadth of ten miles, and one hundred 
and fifty miles long ; and more by so much than was actually 
required, even upon the hypothesis that the Schoodic was the 
true St. Croix. 

III. The next question that arose under the treaty, was in 
regard to the islands in Passamaquoddy Bay ; and this, too, was 
decided in favor of Great Britain. By conceding the title of 
Maine to Moose Island (Eastport) — which could never have 
been in more doubt than her title to Mt. Desert — she acquired 
Campo Bello, and Grand Menan, a large island on our coast 
west of Eastport. This decision, while greatly objectionable, 
and unsupported by the treaty, did not do such gross violence 
to its terms, or to its history, as did that in respect to the St. 



16 THE NORTH-EASTERN" BOUNDARY. 

Croix. It was made November 24, 1817, by Thomas Barclay 
and John Holmes, Commissioners appointed under the pro- 
visions of the 4th article of the treaty of Ghent, December 24, 
1814. 

IV. For twenty years subsequent to 1794 (or the date of 
Jay's treaty), there was no denial of the claims of the United 
States respecting the treaty line, north of the source of the St. 
Croix, on the part of Great Britain ; but, on the contrary she 
many times, and in various ways, assumed their correctness, and 
acted upon that assumption. In the hearing before the Com- 
missioners under this treaty, she asserted it, and obtained a de- 
cision for which she argued on the basis of that assertion. In 
1803, there was a convention between the two nations (which 
the United States failed to ratify on account of a provision 
touching our Western possessions), in which was inserted a 
clause for running the line between the source of the St. Croix 
and the north-west anale of Nova Scotia. It was a misfortune, 
so far as this State was concerned, that this convention was not 
ratified, for there can be no doubt that if it had been, the line 
would have been run and established as claimed by the United 
States ; for, at that time, there was no thought or suggestion of 
any other line. 

In 1804 and 1807, the subject of running the line according to 
the treaty was referred to by the British Government in terms 
implying that there was no difference of opinion between the 
parties as to its construction. Massachusetts had exercised 
undisputed jurisdiction over the territory afterwards brought into 
question. In 1792, she sold to Henry Jackson and Boyal Flint 
a large tract of land lying within the claim afterwards set 
up by Great Britain ; and in 1794, Park Holland and Jona- 
than Mayhew made a survey of the tract extending from the 
St. Croix almost to the highlands dividing the waters of the 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 17 

St. John and the St. Lawrence, and which they were prevented 
from completing only by lack of provisions. This survey was 
laid down on a map of Maine drawn by Osgood Carleton, in 
1795. In 1797, Massachusetts granted from the territory, 
afterwards in dispute, half a township to Deerfield Academy. 
In 1806, a grant of a half township was made to General Eaton, 
and in 1808, a whole township was granted to the town of 
Plymouth. 

Down to the close of the war of 1812, the question stood hi 
this way : 

1. The language of the treaty was plain, undisputed, indis- 
putable. Let us turn to this language once more, and see if it 
is open to doubt. "From, the north-west angle of Nova Scotia, 
to wit : that angle which is formed by a line drawn due north 
from the source of the St. Croix River to the highlands which 
divide those rivers that empty themselves into the St. Lawrence 
from those which fall into the Atlantic Ocean, to the north- 
westernmost head of Connecticut River. * * Hast by a line 
to be drawn along the middle of the river St. Croix, from its 
mouth in the Bay of Fundy to its source, and from its source 
directly north to the aforesaid highlands which divide the rivers 
that fcdl into the Atlantic Ocean from those which fall into the 
river St. Lawrence." 

2. Great Britain had raised no question as to the validity of 
our claim in respect to this line, but, in order to secure her own 
interpretation as to the river St. Croix, had deliberately admitted 
it, aad thereupon laid a foundation for an argument, to con- 
vince the Commissioners of the justice of her contention in 
regard to the river, and had further admitted it by the terms of 
the Convention of 1803. 

3. Massachusetts had exercised unquestioned and undis- 
turbed jurisdiction over the territory for more than twenty years. 

2 



18 THE NOETH-EASTEEN BOUND AEY. 

But, by the close of the war of 1812-15, England had learned 
something of the probable value of a way between her eastern 
and western Provinces, and that such a way would most conven- 
iently, if not necessarily, lead across the State of Maine. She 
affected to believe (and therein was a grave affront) that that 
war was waged by the United States in part for the conquest of 
the Canadas, and insisted that it was therefore reasonable and 
proper that she should take steps to protect them against future 
attacks. On the fourth of September, 1814, her Minister at 
Ghent wrote to our Minister as follows : " If, then, the security 
of the British North American dominions requires any sacrifice" 
(note the word) "on the part of the United States, it must be as- 
cribed to the declared policy of that government in making the 
war not one of self-defence, nor for the redress of grievances, real or 
pretended, but a part of a system of conquest and aggrandizement." 

But, even under the spur of this source of apprehension, Great 
Britain was not prepared to assert that, by the treaty line, the 
road-way was not in the territory of the United States. She ad- 
mitted that it was, and asked for a conventional line. 

On the eighth of August, 1814, the British Commissioners, 
who were then engaged in an effort to make peace, in a note to 
the American Commissioners, describe their request as " such a 
VAEIATION of the line of frontier as may secure a direct commu- 
nication between Quebec and Halifax." To this, on the twenty- 
fourth of August, the American Commissioners replied that 
they had " no authority to cede any part of the territory of the 
United States," and could agree to no such line. The British 
Commissioners, on the fourth of September, return to the sub- 
ject, and say that they are " persuaded that an aeeangement 
on this point might easily be made, if entered into in a spirit of 
conciliation, without any prejudice to the interests of the dis- 
trict in question." From this, it would seem that England did 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 19 

not ask for a clear title, but only for an easement, or right of 
way. But, however this may have been, the American Com- 
missioners, on the ninth of September, protested once more that 
they had no authority to cede any part of the State of Massa- 
chusetts, even for an equivalent." But this plain and decisive 
answer did not silence the British Commissioners ; it, however, 
led them to change their base and plan of attack. And so we 
find them, on the eighth of October, replying that the British 
Government " never required that all that portion of Massachu- 
setts intervening between the Provinces of New Brunswick and 
Quebec should be ceded to Great Britain ; but only that small 
portion of unsettled country which interrupts the communica- 
tion between Quebec and Halifax, there being much doubt whether 
it does not already belong to Great Britain." 

It is curious to note that when at last the British Commission- 
ers found themselves compelled to take a new departure, and 
occupy a position inconsistent with all their previous claims, 
and arguments and concessions, the new role was so strange, 
that in opening it they could not avoid confessing, by their 
language, that it was a false one. They spoke of a cession, i. e., 
of a grant, of a " small portion " of country that " interrupts the 
communication between Quebec and Halifax." As that inter- 
ruption was between the Grand Falls on the St. John and the 
river St. Lawrence, it results that at this time the American 
title north of the former river was acknowledged, and a cession 
of a small part of it only solicited. 

This was the prelude to the doubt, raised for the first time in 
the history of this question, as to the perf ectness of the Ameri- 
can title — a doubt not only unmentioned, but unexisting, until 
after it had been discovered that no propositions for a new line 
would be entertained by the Commissioners of the United States. 
There was then no alternative for Great Britain but to lay the 



20 THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 

foundation for a dispute, and see what would come out of it. 
But even then, she was not prepared to claim as hers, by the 
terms of the treaty, the territory which she had so persistently 
urged, and still continued to urge the government of the United 
States to cede to her. 

Finding that no " variation," " cession," " revision," or " ar- 
rangement " could be obtained through the American Commis- 
sioners, a provision — being the 5th article of the Treaty of 
Ghent — was agreed upon for running the line (not for making a 
new one) in conformity with the treaty of 1783. It was further 
stipulated that in case a failure to run the line by the Commis- 
sioners, to be appointed for that purpose, the differences arising 
between the parties should be referred to the decision of a 
friendly Sovereign. 

Thomas Barclay, of whom we have heard more than once 
before, as a Commissioner under the treaty, on the part of Great 
Britain, and Cornelius P. Van Ness, on the part of the "United 
States, were appointed Commissioners to ascertain and run the 
line. An actual survey was arranged, and surveyors appointed, 
to wit : Charles Turner, Jr., on the part of the United States, and 
Colin Campbell on the part of Great Britain. About twenty 
miles of the line was surveyed, then the work was discontinued, 
never to be resumed ; but an exploring survey was commenced 
by Col. Bouchette, on the part of Great Britain, and John 
Johnson, on the part of the United States. These gentlemen 
made an exploring line in 1817, extending ninety-nine miles 
from the monument at the head of the river St. Croix, and made 
separate reports of their doings. In 1818, Mr. Johnson, with 
Mr. Odell, who had taken the place of Col. Bouchette, finished 
running the exploring line to the Beaver or Metis Biver. It 
was in this year that the opinion was first expressed by the 
British agent, that Mars Hill, an isolated mountain south of 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 21 

the Aroostook Eiver, might be . the north-west angle of Nova 
Scotia, and the north-eastern boundary of Maine. And he, 
having given expression to this novel and preposterous concep- 
tion, proposed to discontinue the survey along the highlands 
south of the river St. Lawrence, return to Mars Hill, and ex- 
plore thence westerly towards the sources of the Chaudiere and 
Kennebec. The result was that the surveyors disagreed, the 
British surveyor refused to go on and finish the exploring sur- 
vey now almost completed, and the work was abandoned. 

From this time, Great Britain began to assert title in herself 
to the country north of Mars Hill, hesitatingly at first, but more 
positively afterwards. To enable her to do this, even to her 
own acceptance, she was compelled to rely on the quibble here- 
tofore mentioned, that a line due north from the source of the 
St. Croix would, before reaching the north-west angle of Nova 
Scotia, as claimed by the United States, and as laid down in all 
the Provincial charters and commissions of royal Governors, 
cross several streams that flow into the Bay of Chaleurs ; and, 
therefore, these highlands would not divide waters that empty 
themselves into the river St. Lawrence from those which fall 
into the Atlantic Ocean. 

And it signified nothing to her that it was answered, that the 
plain meaning . of the treaty was to find highlands which 
divided rivers flowing into the St. Lawrence from those falling 
into the Atlantic Ocean directly, or through some bay or gulf. 
It was hi vain that it was replied that this new interpretation 
defeats the treaty line altogether; for by it, even the river 
St. John does not fall into the Atlantic Ocean, but into the Bay 
of Fundy. If these highlands are denied because they cannot 
be reached before crossing the waters of the Kestigouche, neither 
can they without crossing the St. John, the Aroostook, the 
Meduxnekeag and other rivers. The Penobscot Eiver does not 



22 THE NORTH-E ASTERN BOUNDARY. 

fall into the Atlantic Ocean upon this interpretation, but into 
Penobscot Bay ; the Kennebec flows into the Bay of Sagadahoc, 
and not into the Atlantic Ocean. There are, upon this view, 
no rivers on our coast that fall into the Atlantic. It was in 
vain that it was said that, upon the British contention, the line 
does not divide any rivers that fall into the St. Lawrence from 
any other rivers whatever ; that it divides only those falling 
into the St. John on the north and east from those falling into 
the Penobscot and Kennebec on the south and west, and not 
any that flow into the St. Lawrence on the one side from any 
that flow into the Atlantic Ocean on the other ; that it was 
pointed out that on the British construction, both the St. 
Lawrence Kiver and the Atlantic Ocean were completely erased 
from the treaty. And it availed nothing that the absolutely 
unanswerable point was made, that the southerly line of the 
Province of Quebec ran along highlands which divided waters 
that fall into the St. Lawrence from those which flow into the 
ocean through the Bays of Chaleurs, Fundy, Penobscot, &c, and 
was a well-known and established line for many years, and that 
where a line drawn from the head of the river St. Croix inter- 
sected the south line of the old Province of Quebec, was the 
north-west angle of Nova Scotia — the angle referred to in the 
treaty. It was all irrelevant or unimportant ; Mars Hill, an 
isolated peak, and no range at all, several miles west of a direct 
north line from the source of the St. Croix, and in no way 
intersected by such a line, was the true angle. True, it was a 
solitary peak ; it was not touched by the north line ; it divided 
no rivers running into the St. Lawrence from any that were 
emptied into the ocean, or that had an outlet anywhere else ! 
An administration that should at the present day receive such 
a pretension as this in any other light than as a deliberate affront, 
would be regarded as unworthy of the public respect, and be 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUND AEY. 23 

speedily dismissed from its confidence. It was only in the hour 
of the country's exhaustion, and absolute need of a season for 
recuperation, that the provocation for plainness of speech or for 
action, such as I am glad to say was in our own State not un- 
worthily responded to, was restrained in the country at large 
by what were regarded as the counsels of prudence. 

Down to 1763, when by treaty with the Trench, Canada was 
acquired by Great Britain, both New England and Nova Scotia 
extended to the southerly shore of the St. Lawrence Eiver. 
But, at this time, when it became necessary to establish the 
Province of Quebec, the King extended its limits so as to include 
the valley of that river on the south. The royal proclamation 
of October 7, 1763, established the southerly boundary of the 
Province of Quebec on the highlands which separated the rivers 
running to the north or north-east into the St. Lawrence from 
those running to the south and south-east. In other words, the 
Treaty of Peace of 1783 made this southerly boundary of 
Quebec the northerly one of Massachusetts. Parliament, in 
1774, confirmed the southerly boundary of Quebec as described 
in the proclamation of the King in the previous year. 

A map, on which these highlands were laid down, had been 
made by John Mitchell, at the request of the Lords Commis- 
sioners of Trade and Plantations, in 1755, and was the acknowl- 
edged, authoritative map of the time. So far as this boundary 
line is concerned it was, as we have seen, followed and adopted 
by John Mitchell in his survey and plan in 1764. Whether the 
John Mitchell who made the survey in the latter year was the 
author of the map of 1755 or not, it is certain that the easterly 
line of Massachusetts, as claimed by the United States, was 
verified and authenticated by both the map of 1755 and the 
plan of 1764. The former was produced by the British Com- 
missioners at the negotiation of the treaty, and was adopted and 



24 THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 

used by both parties. It was the official map, and a part of the 
record. 

Eeferring to the point on which the British pretensions were 
founded, to wit : that the St. John Eiver does not fall into the 
Atlantic Ocean, but into the Bay of Fundy, and therefore the 
dividing line or highlands must be sought south of this river, 
I am induced to quote a few paragraphs from a report made to the 
Senate of the United States, July 4, 1838, by Mr. Buchanan, 
afterwards President of the United States : 

" Now, what are the objections to this extraordinary pretension, 
as the committee are constrained to call it ? 

"And, first, what is the Bay of Fundy, if it be not a part of the 
Atlantic Ocean ? A bay is a mere opening of the main ocean into 
the land — a mere interruption of the uniformity of the seacoast by 
an indentation of water. These portions of the ocean have received 
the name of bays, solely to distinguish them from the remainder of 
the vast deep, to which they belong. Would it not be the merest 
special pleading to contend that the Bay of Naples was not a por- 
tion of the Mediterranean, or that the Bay of Biscay was not a part 
of the Atlantic Ocean ? 

"Again : the description of the treaty is, ' rivers which fall into 
the Atlantic Ocean.' Can it be said, with any propriety, that a 
river does not fall into the Atlantic, because, in reaching the main 
ocean, it may pass through a bay ? And yet this is the British 
argument. The Delaware does not fall into the Atlantic, because 
it flows into it through the Bay of Delaware ; and, for the same 
reason, the St. John does not fall into the Atlantic, because it flows 
into it through the Bay of Fundy. The committee know not how 
to give a serious answer to such an argument. The bare statement 
of it is its best refutation. 

" But, like all such arguments, it proves too much. If it be 
correct, this portion of the treaty of 1783 is rendered absurd and 
suicidal ; and the wise and distinguished statesmen, by whom it 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 25 

was framed, must be condemned by posterity, for affixing their 
names to an instrument, in tbis particular, at least, absolutely void. 
Although they believed they would prevent ' all disputes which 
might arise in future, on the subject of the boundaries of the 
United States,' by fixing their commencement at ' the north-west 
angle of Nova Scotia,' and running from thence along ' the high- 
lands which divide those rivers which empty themselves into the 
river St. Lawrence, from those which fall into the Atlantic ocean,' 
yet it is absolutely certain, that there was not a single river in that 
whole region of country which, according to the British construc- 
tion, did fall into the Atlantic ocean. They all fall into bays, with- 
out one exception. Neither can we plead ignorance as an excuse 
for these Commissioners ; because it is fully in proof, that they had 
Mitchell's map before them, from which the fact clearly appears. 
The Eistigouche does not fall into the Atlantic, because it has its 
mouth in the Bay of Chaleurs ; nor does the Penobscot, because its 
mouth is in the Bay of Penobscot ; nor do the Kennebeck and 
Androscoggin, because, after their junction, they fall into the Bay 
of Sagadahock. The same is true, even of the Connecticut, be- 
cause it empties itself into Long Island Sound. All the rivers in 
that region are in the same condition with the St. John. Tbus it 
appears, if the British argument be well founded, that the Com- 
missioners have concluded a treaty, and described highlands, whence 
streams proceed falling into the Atlantic, as a portion of the bound- 
ary of the United States, when from the very face of the map be- 
fore them, it is apparent no such streams exist. 

"There is another objection to the British claim, which is con- 
clusive. Wherever the highlands of the treaty exist, they must be 
highlands from which on the north side streams proceed falling 
into the St. Lawrence. This portion of the description is as es- 
sential as that from their south side streams should issue falling 
into the Atlantic. Now, the British claim abandons the former 
part of the description altogether. Their line of highlands com- 
mencing at Mars Hill, is at least a hundred miles south of the 



26 THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 

highlands whence the tributaries of the St. Lawrence flow. Be- 
tween these highlands and those claimed by the British Govern- 
ment, the broad valley of the St. John spreads itself, watered by 
the river of that name, and the streams which empty into it from 
the north and from the south. The two points on the western line 
of New Brunswick are distant from each other more than a hun- 
dred miles ; and when you arrive at the British highlands, you find 
that they divide the sources of the St. John and the Penobscot, and 
not the sources of streams falling into the St. Lawrence and the 
Atlantic Ocean, according to the description of the treaty. 

" But how is it possible ever to embrace Mars Hill in the line of 
highlands running from the western extremity of the Bay of 
Chaleurs, and forming the southern boundary of the Province of 
Quebec ? It is clear that in this, and in this alone, the north- 
western angle of Nova Scotia is to be found. Mars Hill is one 
hundred miles directly south of this line. You cannot, by any 
possibility, embrace that hill in this range, unless you can prove 
that a hill in latitude 46^ is part of a ridge directly north of it in 
latitude 48 ; and this, notwithstanding the whole valley of the St. 
John, from its southern to its northern extremity, intervenes 
between the two. The thing is impossible. Mars Hill can never 
be made, by any human ingenuity, the north-west angle of Nova 
Scotia." 

In closing the discussion of the question of right, Mr. Bu- 
chanan's report employs this very emphatic language : 

" Upon the whole, the committee do not entertain a doubt of the 
title of the United States to the whole of the disputed territory. 
They go further, and state that if the general Government be not 
both able and willing to protect the territory of each State invio- 
late, then it will have proved itself incapable of performing one of 
its first and highest duties." 

The following resolution was passed unanimously by both 
Houses of Congress: 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 27 

"■Resolved, That after a careful examination and deliberate con- 
sideration of the whole controversy between the United States and 
Great Britain, relative to the north-eastern boundary of the former, 
the Senate does not entertain a doubt of the entire practicability 
of running and marking that boundary, in strict conformity with 
the stipulations of the definitive treaty of peace of seventeen 
hundred and eighty-three ; and it entertains a perfect conviction 
of the justice and validity of the title of the United States to the 
full extent of all the territory in dispute between the two parties." 

Having thus described and explained the several and con- 
flicting claims of Great Britain in respect to this territory, I 
now proceed to give a brief history of negotiations and events 
connected with the question subsequent to the treaty of Ghent, 
and to the abandonment of the Odell and Johnson survey. 

For twenty years after this treaty, Great Britain received 
no new light, and made no new arguments ; but with these 
alone she commenced making aggressions — gradually, quietly, 
moderately at first, so as not too soon to arrest the atten- 
tion of the United States — and after a series of acts of occu- 
pation and jurisdiction, came at length to more open and 
positive claims, such as should afford a pretext for proposing a 
mutual or concurrent jurisdiction of the territory. 

Following the course of events after the erection of Maine 
into a State, we find in the year in which that event happened, 
the government of the United States taking the census of Mada- 
waska, on both sides of the river St. John, with no objection 
from Great Britain. 

Governor King, in his message to the first Legislature of 
Maine, expresses his inability to inform that body what progress 
had been made under the 5th article of the treaty of Ghent, in 
settling the boundary, but he complains that the agent ap- 
pointed on the part of the United States, in reference to this 



28 THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 

question, had not been selected from Maine or Massachusetts. 
The Legislature passed a Eesolve requesting the federal govern- 
ment to cause the line to be run and established. 

Governor Parris, in his annual message hi 1822, informs the 
Legislature that he learns that the "claims of the British Com- 
missioner cover a tract of country heretofore confessedly be- 
longing to this State, and over which it has exercised jurisdic- 
tion," and suggests that the attention of our Senators and 
Representatives in Congress be called to the subject, and the 
more, as neither the* Commissioner or agent, on the part of the 
United States, belongs to this State. A Eesolve was passed by 
the Legislature January 16, 1822, requesting our Senators and 
Representatives in Congress "to collect all the information 
winch they can obtain, relating to the causes which have pro- 
duced the difference of opinion between the American and 
British Commissioners, * * * and the extent and nature 
of the claims set up by the British Commissioner, and transmit 
said information to the Executive of this State." 

In his message for 1823, Governor Parris makes no reference 
to this subject. 

In 1824, he returns to the question in these words : " In 
consequence of the disagreement of the Commissioners ap- 
pointed under the 5th article of the treaty of Ghent, a proposi- 
tion has been made by the government of the United States, 
and accepted by the British Government, to endeavor to estab- 
lish this boundary by amicable negotiation, rather than by the 
decision of a foreign power, as provided by the treaty. This ar- 
rangement is believed to be satisfactory to Maine, and we have 
reason to feel a confidence that the negotiation will be so con- 
ducted as to secure to this State its just rights." 

But matters do not look quite so well in 1825, and we find 
Governor Parris a little impatient at the slow progress that is 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 29 

being made towards an establishment of the boundary line. 
He tells the Legislature, in his message to that body, that " there 
is reason to believe that depredations to a very considerable 
extent have been committed on our timber lands lying on the 
Aroostook and Madawaska, and other streams emptying into the 
St. John. * * It is represented that these depreciations are 
committed by British subjects, and on that portion of the terri- 
tory of the State which is claimed by the British government as 
belonging to the Province of New Brunswick. This pretended 
claim, it is understood, includes about one-third of our territory, 
and comprehends a great portion of our best timber land and 
large tracts of superior quality for cultivation and settlement." 

A committee of the Legislature reported that they were sat- 
isfied that the trespasses referred to by the Governor, were 
committed under permits and licenses from British authorities, 
and that it behooved the States of Maine and Massachusetts 
" to adopt the most efficient measures to prevent further en- 
croachments upon this territory, and to urge upon the national 
government the necessity and importance of bringing to a 
speedy and favorable termination the negotiation on this inter- 
esting subject, which has been so long protracted." 

On the twenty-sixth of February of this year, the Legisla- 
ture passed a Eesolve respecting the settlers on the territory, of 
which the following is a copy : 

"Whereas, There are a number of settlers on the undivided 
public lands on the St. John and Madawaska Rivers, many of 
whom have resided therein more than thirty years ; therefore, 

"Resolved, That the land agent of this State, in conjunction 
with such agent as may be appointed for that purpose on the part 
of the State of Massachusetts, be, and he is hereby authorized and 
directed to make and execute good and sufficient deeds conveying 
to such settlers in actual possession, as aforesaid, their heirs and 



30 THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 

assigns, one hundred acres each of the land hy thern possessed, to 
include their improvements on their respective lots, they paying 
to the said agent, for the use of the State, five dollars each and the 
expense of surveying the same." 

Authority was given by another Eesolve to sell timber on 
territory lying on or near the river St. John. 

Massachusetts passed similar Eesolves to the above, and 
during the year deeds were executed and delivered by James 
Irish and George W. Coffin, land agents, to John Baker and 
James Bacon, of the lands occupied by them on the north side 
of the St. John Eiver, lying on the Mariumpticook Biver, west 
of the Madawaska Biver, and ten to fifteen miles above any of 
the French settlements. As early as 1817, several families 
from Kennebec County had settled in this neighborhood, 
among whom was Nathan Baker. Nathan died before 1825, 
and his widow married his brother, John Baker, who occupied 
the premises that had been taken up by Nathan, and on which 
not only a dwelling house, but a saw mill and grist mill, had 
been erected. There were several other American settlers in 
this neighborhood. 

Governor Parris called the attention of the Legislature to the 
subject once more, in his annual message of 1826, and expresses 
increased uneasiness in view of the condition of affairs, and 
urges that measures be taken to procure copies of maps, reports 
and other papers bearing upon the question. In the Legisla- 
ture, a committee, of which Beuel Williams was chairman, 
reported a Besolve, which was passed, requesting the Governor 
to procure copies of maps, documents, publications, papers and 
surveys relating to the boundary ; and also, if Massachusetts 
should concur, to " cause the eastern and northern lines of the 
State of Maine to be explored, and the monuments upon those 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 31 

lines mentioned in the treaty of 1783 to be ascertained in such 
manner as may be most expedient." 

Another Eesolve passed by the Legislature this year, provided 
for the opening and clearing of a road from Penobscot Eiver to 
Houlton, and for marking a road from the mouth of the Matta- 
wamkeag to the mouth of Fish Eiver in the river St. John. 

In January, 1827, Enoch Lincoln, whose devotion to the 
interests and honor of the State was so engrossing and complete 
as to make his name a synonym for both, was inaugurated Gov- 
ernor. 

Eeferring in his first message to the north-eastern boundary 
question, he said — 

" It becomes a community to be tenacious of its territorial pos- 
sessions, when its relative political importance and its self-pro- 
tecting powers are in a degree involved in tbem. But as we have 
no reason to believe that the right or disposition anywhere exists 
to cede our soil, under the pretext of adjusting a limit, which 
would be an abuse in which neitber the people nor the govern- 
ments of the Union or the States would acquiesce, we may safely 
anticipate that our landmarks will be held sacred, and that our 
inalienable sovereignty will be respected." 

Here were strong, clear, unmistakable words. The right, 
which there were some grounds to fear might be asserted, was 
denied — the right to cede our soil " under the pretext of adjust- 
ing a limit." Our title was " inalienable." 

It has been seen that the Legislature of the last year called on the 
government of the United States for copies of maps and documents. 
This request was not complied with, for reasons which appear 
hi the journal of President John Quincy Adams, under date of 
August 14, 1826. Mr. Adams says : " Mr. Parris " — Governor 
Parris of Maine, who had called upon the President — " spoke of 
the deep int*est which his State had in the controversy ; and 



32 THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 

although he felt full confidence that the government of the 
United States would consent to no stipulation injurious to the 
rights of the State, yet he said they were not without appre- 
hensions that New York might be willing to purchase Eouse's 
Point at the expense of Maine " — a fear that was prophetic, for 
it was literally realized in the Ashburton treaty in 1842. The 
journal continues : " He manifested a wish to be furnished with 
copies of the arguments of the agents, and reports of the Com- 
missioners under the 5th article of the treaty of Ghent, which 
we declined giving heretofore, from an apprehension that a pre- 
mature disclosure of them might operate unfavorably upon the 
negotiation. I told him that their great bulk was an obstacle 
to the furnishing of copies, but that they had been, and would 
still be, open to the inspection and perusal of the Eepresenta- 
tives and Senators from Maine, and would be equally so to the 
Governor of the State, if present." 

Alluding to this refusal to give copies by the federal govern- 
ment, Governor Lincoln, in his message for 1827, said : " My 
immediate predecessor has solicited the documents contemplated 
by a Resolve of a former Legislature relative to our boundary, 
and I cannot but hope that the person applied to will find the 
obligations of his situation so modified as to admit his furnish- 
ing the proper officers of this State information by which it 
may be prepared to judge correctly of the rights of the Union and 
of a foreign nation, in connection with that independent right 
which it ought to maintain, so far as the prudent application of 
all its justifiable means will permit." 

So much of this message as related to the boundary was 
referred to a joint select committee, which made a brief report 
through the Hon. John G. Deane, a gentleman who^with the 
possible exceptions of Governor Lincoln and Mr. Daveis, under- 
stood this question better than any man living. • 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 33 

" The State," said the committee, " neither seeks nor claims 
more than her own, but she has a deep interest in preserving 
and retaining all to which she has a right ; and will not be 
wanting in any proper exertion to preserve and maintain the 
integrity of her territory." Again, " We can anticipate only 
one class of events which would invest a right in the general 
government to give up any such territory ; and those events are 
such only which, from the application of external force, would 
impair the national compact and destroy the present Union. 
In any other case we deny the right of the government of the 
United States to yield any portion of our territory to any other 
independent sovereignty, unless by the consent of the State." 

A Eesolve was passed requesting the Governor to take all 
measures he should deem expedient in acquiring information, 
and procuring a speedy adjustment of the dispute according to 
the treaty of 1783. 

Full of the subject himself, sensitive to the honor of the Com- 
monwealth, stung by the indignity done her by the seizure and 
imprisonment of her citizens by a foreign power, impatient of 
the trifling excuses and pretexts by which her rights and in- 
terests had been kept in abeyance for forty years, and thus 
armed and instructed by the Legislature, the Governor went to 
work at once, in the most earnest and vigorous manner, to bring 
the question to the front and secure its prompt and just settle- 
ment. 

On the twentieth of March, he addressed a letter to the Sec- 
retary of State at Washington, transmitting the above Eeport 
and Eesolve, and asking for copies of the documents which had 
been before denied. The Secretary (Mr. Clay) replied on the 
twenty-seventh of March, and assured the Governor that the 
President felt a most lively solicitude on the subject that Mr. 
Gallatin was charged with, and had entered on a negotiation 

3 



34 THE NOETH-EASTEEN BOUNDAEY. 

concerning it ; that the prospect was that there would be no 
alternative but referring the difference to arbitration according 
to the provisions of the treaty of Ghent ; that copies of maps, 
surveys, or documentary evidence would be furnished when ap- 
plied for, but that copies of the reports and arguments of the 
Commissioners could not be given ; that the British government 
had abstained, under a promise given by her Minister at Wash- 
ington, from any new exercise of sovereignty over the disputed 
territory, and he hoped that Maine would, during the pendency 
of negotiations, practice a like forbearance. 

To this communication Governor Lincoln replied on the eight- 
eenth of April, 1827, and, after assuring the President (in answer 
to some unfounded report that State officials had been proposing 
a change of boundary) " that Maine will never jeopardize the 
common welfare by failing to insist on the justice and inde- 
feasible character of its claim, or by shrinking from a firm 
assertion of it in any alternative," he continued, that it was 
" with regret, not unmingled with mortification, that he con- 
sidered the denial of the use of the reports and arguments of 
the Commissioners under the treaty of Ghent. * * * Maine 
had sought information only as an interest vital to herself, as 
well as important to the country, without any purpose calcu- 
lated to excite distrust, with only such patriotic views as have 
rendered the refusal to comply with her request a subject of 
that species of surprise which a friend, predetermined to take 
no offence, feels when he is not treated with correspondent confi- 
dence." The request for papers is renewed, under a promise 
that they shall be used only before the Legislature, and under 
the restrictions of confidential communications. The Governor 
then reminds Mr. Clay that it is a proposition which .has been 
demonstrated by himself " so clearly as to have commanded 
general respect, that the abstraction of the territory of the 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 35 

United States cannot be made by the treaty-making or executive 
power." Much more, then, he says, must the domain of a State 
be sacred. Eef erring to an expression of Mr. Gallatin, that an 
umpire, whether king or farmer, rarely decides on strict princi- 
ples of law, and has always " a bias to try, if possible, to split 
the difference," he protests against any arrangement which will 
endanger the half from the circumstance of a wrongful claim to 
the whole, under the pitiful weakness which is liable to split 
the difference between riQ'ht and wronsj. 

Mr. Clay writes the Governor on the seventh of May, giving lists 
of the papers and maps, copies of which would be furnished ; 
and as to the others, he says they may be inspected by the 
Governor, or any agent of the State, confidentially. 

On the twenty-ninth of May, Governor Lincoln, after referring 
to the discouraging character of his previous correspondence 
with the Secretary of State, says, " that having learned that the 
title of the State " to an extensive tract of country, " is involved 
in the details of a diplomatic arrangement conducted under the 
sanction of the executive department of the federal government, 
Maine, although not consulted, yet bound from deference to pay 
a due respect to reasons, the nature and force of which she is, 
from a studious and mysterious reserve, rendered unable to 
comprehend, believes that she ought to present her expostula- 
tion in regard to any measures threatening her injury." He 
understands that the question is not to be limited in the submis- 
sion to the treaty line of 1783, and that the Sovereign may de- 
cide at pleasure on the whole subject, without being bound by 
tbe obligations of an oath ; and that the Sovereign is one whose 
feelings will be prejudiced against a Eepublic accused of inor- 
dinate ambition. And he adds : " It is not in cold blood that I 
can anticipate the committing the destinies of Maine to an irre- 
sponsible arbiter to be found in a distant land, and necessarily 



36 THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 

unqualified to act in the case. * * Suffice it to say that the 
proposed arbitration will jeopardize; without her consent and 
against her will, the rights of Maine. And allow me to add," 
continued the Governor, in those grave and strong words which 
stirred the blood of every true son of Maine to a boiling heat, 
and, reaching the department of State, brought the federal 
administration to a halt in what it had been apprehended 
were its purposes, " that if called upon to make the required 
sacrifice, she will he compelled to deliberate on an alternative 
which will test the strictness of her principles and the firmness 
of her temper." 

He reminds the President that when Massachusetts entered 
the Union " she yielded no right to dispose of her soil, or to ab- 
stract any part of it from her jurisdiction, * * nor to ex- 
pose, without her consent, her dearly purchased and sacred 
rights to arbitrament." He warns him that the State of Maine 
" will not observe any procedure by the United States and Great 
Britain for the severance of her territory and the abrogation of 
her authority, without a sensibility too serious to be passive. 
She holds that her domain is not the subject of partition." He 
puts the question in a paragraph : " No statesman will assert 
that the treaty-making power is competent to an act trans- 
cending the scope of the combined trusts of the government." 

Eecurring, as he could not help doing, to the effrontery of the 
British claim, with which our government permitted itself to 
be trifled with, he declares that " It may be confidently asserted 
not only that the provision of the treaty of 1783 is imperative, 
but that it describes our boundary with a precision which 
shames the British claim, and, connected with the making of 
that claim, casts a shadow over the lustre of the British charac- 
ter." He closes this remarkable letter with an expression of 
regret that the. government should refuse the information con- 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 37 

» 

templated by a resolution of the State, but says he shall con- 
tinue to hope for the preservation, under the protecting care of 
the government, of that now exposed territory, destined under 
any proprietor to be soon occupied by a numerous population, 
engaged in all the pursuits which sustain human life and adorn 
human nature." 

This letter is acknowledged by Mr. Clay on the ninth of 
June, and the Governor is assured that the observations made 
therein shall receive due attention and respectful consideration, 
and that in no contingency is any arbitration contemplated of 
the difference between the two countries, but that for which 
provision has been solemnly made by treaty — that is, the ques- 
tion to be submitted shall concern alone the treaty line of 1783. 

September third, the Governor informs the Secretary of State, 
that he has information of acts of encroachment and aggression 
upon our territory by the authorities of New Brunswick ; that 
American settlers holding lands, under titles from Maine and 
Massachusetts, are denied the right to hold real estate, are taxed 
as aliens, and are refused the transmission of their products as 
American, while acts of jurisdiction are constantly exercised 
by these authorities. He then proceeds to show the value of 
this country to Maine and the United States, and the import- 
ance of excluding British control and jurisdiction. He refers 
to our right to the navigation of the river St. John by the law 
of nations, as recognized in the case of the Mississippi Biver, 
and to the wrong that will be done if this right is allowed to 
be successfully contested. He again informs the Department 
that Maine will never assent to the result of an arbitration un- 
favorable to her interests and in derogation of her rights. 

On the fourteenth of September, Mr. Clay informs Governor 
Lincoln that he has advised the British minister that it is ex- 
pected the necessary orders will be given on the part of. the 



38 THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. # 

British government to enforce forbearance from new acts tending 
to strengthen its claims'. It will be remembered that an under- 
standing had been come to between these parties, that there 
should be no " new " acts of this kind by either side. f 

Notwithstanding this agreement and notice, Governor Lincoln 
had occasion, on the twenty-second of October, to write the 
Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick, that he has informa- 
tion that one of the citizens of Maine, by the name of John 
Baker, while residing on its territory, has been arrested and de- 
tained in gaol at Fredericton, in that Province, and asks to be 
advised concerning the facts. He informs the Lieutenant-Gov- 
ernor that the attempt to extend the jurisdiction of New 
Brunswick over this territory will compel counter action from 
Maine. He says : " The arrest of our citizens on what we believe 
to be a part of our State, will demand its utmost energies for 
resistance." 

The Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick, on the fifteenth 
of November, acknowledges the receipt of the above letter, but 
declines to give any information, on the ground that he is not 
permitted to give it except to those with whom he is directed 
to correspond, or under whose orders he is placed, and declines 
to have any further correspondence with the Governor of Maine. 
The scarcely veiled insolence of this reply, especially when con- 
sidered in connection with the correspondence between Gov- 
ernor Fairfield and Lieutenant-Governor Harvey, hereafter re- 
ferred to, is painfully apparent. 

The Governor of Maine, however, came into possession of an 
official writ, by which it appeared that John Baker was ordered 
to appear and answer for that he had entered and intruded upon 
the lands of the King in the County of Kent, in the Province 
of New Brunswick, and erected and built thereon a house and 
other edifices, and cut and felled and carried away timber and 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 39 

other trees, &c. This was alleged to have been done on land 
situated on the northerly side of the St. John River, and between 
the rivers Madawaska and St. Francis. 

On the fifth of November, the Governor appointed Charles 
Stuart Daveis, Esquire, of Portland, agent, with authority to act 
in behalf of the State of Maine in obtaining information, either 
informally or by authenticated statements, as to all subjects 
relating to rights of property and jurisdiction between the 
government of the State and that of New Brunswick. Mr. 
Daveis took with him a letter from the Governor of Maine to 
the Lieut.-Governor of New Brunswick, advising the latter 
of Mr. Daveis' appointment, and its object, and stating that he 
was authorized to demand the release of Baker. 

On the sixteenth of November, the Governor acknowledges 
the receipt of the documents (so long withheld) from the De- 
partment of State, but expresses his regret that, from the con- 
tents of the Secretary's letter of the tenth instant, he learns 
that the objections he has offered to arbitration, without con- 
sulting this State, have been unavailing. He adds, in a voice 
almost choked with grief : "At last we learn that our strength, 
security and wealth are to be subjected to the mercy of a 
foreign individual, who, it has been said by your minister, 
' rarely decides upon strict principles of law, and has always a 
bias to try, if possible, to split the difference.' I cannot but 
yield to the impulse of saying, most respectfully, that 
Maine has not been treated as she has endeavored to 

DESERVE." 

He then informs the Secretary of the facts in the case of 
John Baker. 

By this time, the excitement in the State, occasioned by the 
imprisonment of Baker and other acts by the Province of New 
Brunswick, had grown to such a heat, that Governor Lincoln 



40 THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 

found it necessary, in order to prevent premature collisions, to 
issue a proclamation, in which he exhorted forbearance and 
peace on the part of citizens suffering or threatened with wrong, 
and those interested by sympathy and principle on account of 
the violation of our territory, " so that the preparations for pre- 
venting the removal of our landmarks, and guarding the sacred 
and inestimable rights of American citizens may not be em- 
barrassed by any unauthorized acts." 

Mr. Clay writes Governor Lincoln, on the twenty-seventh of 
November, that " the government of the United States is fully 
convinced that the right of the territory in dispute is with us, 
and not with Great Britain. The convictions of Maine are not 
stronger in respect to the validity of our title than those which 
are entertained by the President." But he reminds his corre- 
spondent that the United States is under treaty obligation to 
refer the question, and cannot refuse to carry out what it has 
pledged itself to perform. 

Mr: Daveis, of whose appointment notice has been taken, 
visited Houlton and Fredericton this autumn. At the former 
place he met persons who had come from above Madawaska, and 
were enabled to report to him the condition of things in that 
section so fully that he did not deem it necessary to visit it in 
person. He gives, in a report made to the Governor Jan. 31, 
1828, a succinct history of the progress of the settlements on 
the territory in dispute, by citizens of Maine and Massachusetts ; 
of trespasses in the way of cutting timber by inhabitants of 
New Brunswick under license from that Province ; of seizures 
from, and impositions upon, American citizens by Provincial 
authorities, by the service of precepts issued by magistrates in 
New Brunswick, on American citizens within their own lines ; 
and the removal of property from this State by virtue of levies 
on executions issued by Provincial courts. New Brunswick 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 41 

officials warned off American citizens from lands lying within 
forty miles from Houlton and west of the boundary line. Amer- 
ican citizens were driven, by fear, from occupying their own 
houses to " lodging about in different places, in barns, or in the 
woods, mustering together for the night hi larger or smaller 
parties, or separating for greater security." Mr. Daveis gives 
some account of the settlement of the Acadians on the river St. 
John after the peace of 1783, whose number, by the American 
census of 1820, was over eleven hundred. The first settlement 
by Americans in this neighborhood was, he reported, in 1817, 
and not far from the mouth of the river St. Francis. This set- 
tlement was made by several families from the County of Ken- 
nebec, in this State. Among them were those of Baker and 
Bacon, before referred to, who, in the year 1825, received 
deeds of their possessions from the land agents of Maine and 
Massachusetts, and who built a mill under the authority of 
these States. These American families entered into a compact 
between themselves, by which they agreed to submit all disputes 
and differences with each other to a tribunal of their own ap- 
pointment. This was done to avoid and deny all British juris- 
diction. It was to last only one year, as the settlers expected 
to receive, before the expiration of that time, from their State 
government, the protection of its regular and constituted authori- 
ties, for which they had petitioned. That this " home rule " 
might be properly inaugurated, the Americans assembled at 
John Baker's, and erected a staff and raised a rude representa- 
tion of the American eagle, and they enjoyed a repast in the 
evening at his house, at which there were music and dancing. 
When these facts came to the knowledge of one Morehouse, a 
provincial magistrate who had on many occasions given annoy- 
ance, and inflicted injury and outrage upon citizens of this 
State living on their own soil, and sometimes on grants made 



42 THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 

by Maine and Massachusetts, he presented himself at John 
Baker's and gave order for the removal of the American ensign, 
which Baker — thenceforward called General Baker — declined 
to obey. Morehouse then demanded the paper of agreement or 
compact, which Baker refused to deliver. About this time it 
so happened that Baker had made some inquiry of a French- 
man, who was carrying a mail, in respect to that service, which 
the latter misunderstood, and interpreted as indicating a purpose 
to interfere with its performance. Thereupon, Morehouse 
issued a warrant against Baker, and not him alone, but Bacon 
and one Charles Stetson also, as connected with him in such 
imputed interference. 

Mr. Daveis continues his account in these words : 
"Early in the evening of the twenty-fifth of September, soon 
after their return " — from Portland, where Baker and Bacon had 
been to report the state of affairs on the St. John, and to solicit aid 
from the State — " and while Baker and his family were asleep, the 
house was surrounded by an armed force, and entered by persons 
of a civil character and others armed with fusees, &c, who seized 
Baker in his bed, and conveyed him, without loss of time, out of 
the State. The particulars relating to this circumstance are de- 
tailed in the statement of Asahel Baker, a nephew of John Baker, 
who was first awakened by the entry. * * The person conduct- 
ing the execution proved to be of high official character and per- 
sonal respectability in the Province of New Brunswick. He was 
informed that papers were in the possession of Baker, justifying 
him under the authority of the States ; but he replied that it was 
not in his power to attend to any remonstrance. No resistance 
was made by Baker, and no opportunity was afforded him to have 
intercourse with any friends and neighbors, from whom it was 
reasonable to suppose opposition might have been apprehended. 
Mr. Baker was carried before Morehouse, in obedience to the war- 
rant ; it does not appear that any examination took place, how- 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 43 

ever, but that he was conveyed to Fredericton and there committed 
to gaol. The letter from your Excellency to the American inhab- 
itants at the upper settlement, was delivered by him to the author- 
ity under which he was imprisoned, and after some detention 
restored to him. 

" The immediate impression produced among the inhabitants of 
the settlement by this circumstance, may appear from the further 
statement of Asahel Baker. He was the person employed to bring 
a representation from them of the arrest of John Baker, which 
was deposited by him in the first post office he reached in Ken- 
nebec. He was absent some days, and on his return found that 
several of the inhabitants had departed. It appears that in the 
interim the alien tax had been again demanded, and process had 
been served upon the American settlers, generally, similar to that 
which had been previously served on the Aroostook, indiscrimin- 
ately, to appear at Fredericton in October, to answer to suits for 
trespass and intrusion on Crown lands, under the penalty of one 
hundred pounds. It is understood that the service of this process 
was extended to the American settlers towards the St. Francis and 
upon the Fish River, where the road laid out by the Legislatures 
of the two States terminates. In consequence of these circum- 
stances, it appears that three of the American settlers, Charles 
Stetson, Jacob Goldthwait and Charles Smart have parted with 
their possessions and removed from the settlement into the planta- 
tion of Houlton, where they are at present seeking subsistence. 
Stetson was a blacksmith, in good business, and was concerned in 
the measure relating to Morehouse. The motives and particulars 
of their departure are stated by them in their respective affidavits. 

" In the precarious state of their affairs, it is probable that no 
certain estimate can be formed of their sacrifices ; but it is evident 
that the measures made use of towards the inhabitants in general, 
for whatever purpose, have had the effect to expel a portion of 
them, and to intimidate the remainder. * * It is evident that 
a corresponding application of judicial proceedings has been made 



44 THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 

from the Province of New Brunswick upon all the settlements 
above and below the French occupation of Madawaska, tending to 
their extermination ; and that the inhabitants are awaiting, in a 
state of fearful anxiety, the final execution, from which they see no 
prospect of relief." 

These proceedings were justified and adopted, if not pre- 
viously authorized, by Sir Howard Douglass, Lieut.-Governor of 
New Brunswick, and by Mr. Vaughan, the British Minister at. 
Washington, as appears by a letter from the latter to Mr. Clay, 
November 21, 1827. 

The results of these doings were summed up by Mr. Daveis 
as follows : 

" Citizens of Maine, and others settled on lands surveyed and 
granted by its authority, living within its ancient and long-estab- 
lished limits, are subjected to the operation of foreign laws. These 
are applied to them in the ordinary course of civil process, in 
taking away their property, and also their persons. American 
citizens in this State are proceeded against as aliens, for sedition 
and other offences, and misdemeanors against the Crown of Great 
Britain ; and one of them, a grantee of Massachusetts and Maine, 
seized on the land granted, remains in prison on charges of that 
description.'' 

When these facts became known to the people and the Legis- 
lature of the State, there was a deep feeling of indignation at 
the wrong and outrage ; and the only wonder to-day is, that it 
could have been restrained to peaceable expressions and protests. 
To us, the patience with which these encroachments and insults 
were borne is simply incredible. 

When the Legislature assembled in January, 1828, Governor 
Lincoln had received the documents and papers, which he had 
been unable to obtain before. He announced to that body the 
fact that an arbitration had been entered into between the two 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 45 

governments, and he called its attention to the claim of tempo- 
rary jurisdiction by New Brunswick, to the arrest and impris- 
onment of Baker, and the report of Mr. Daveis. He declared : 
" Maine cannot abandon its obligations, its title deeds and its 
rights. It cannot allow its citizens to be incarcerated in foreign 
gaols. The State would shrink most dreadfully under the 
shame of such a submission." In this arbitration, the King of 
the Netherlands was made the umpire. 

The Legislature took up the subject in a manner that showed 
that, while not unmindful of its relations and duties to the 
federal government, nor willing unnecessarily to embarrass it, it 
had a painful sense of the wrong and injury the State had re- 
ceived. Hon. John G. Deane, on behalf of a joint Select Com- 
mittee, made a report so full, so accurate, so absolutely conclu- 
sive of every question, as to leave nothing more to be said for 
the vindication of our claims and of our interpretation of the 
treaty of 1783. A Besolve was passed, demanding defence and 
protection from the United States ; and, in case of new aggres- 
sions, authorizing the Governor, if seasonable protection is not 
afforded by the general government, to use all proper and 
constitutional means to protect and defend our citizens ; and 
calling for a demand upon the British government for the release 
of John Baker ; also, providing for the relief of his family. 

Governor Lincoln, in his last annual message, which he ad- 
dressed to the Legislature in January, 1829, a few months 
before his lamented death, refers to the vigorous action of the 
preceding Legislature, from which he thinks some practical 
results may have come, and he mentions, among these, its good 
effect upon the nation. The President, he says, has yielded 
every possible support ; a garrison has been established upon 
our frontier, an agent from among ourselves has been appointed, 
a military road has been provided for, and Baker's case has been 



46 THE NOKTH-EASTEKN BOUNDAEY. 

assumed by the United States ; and, besides this, the character 
_ of the King of the Netherlands is such as to give ground of 
hope that the decision will be a just one. 

The Legislature passed an act " to prevent foreigners from 
exercising acts of jurisdiction within this State, by serving civil 
or criminal process." 

In 1830, Jonathan G. Hunton was Governor, but nothing of 
special interest relating to this question seems to have taken 
place during his administration. 

In 1831, Governor Samuel E. Smith refers to the delay that 
has arisen in reaching a decision by the umpire, and suggests 
that it may have occurred from the disturbances that had taken 
place in his own kingdom, and which, by depriving him of the 
greatest portion of his kingdom, had made him a dependent on 
Great JBritain. He doubted whether under these circumstances 
he ought to act, or could properly act, as umpire. He says: 
" Whatever confidence may be put in the justice of our cause, 
however clearly our right may be shewn in argument, we cer- 
tainly could not be willing to submit it to the umpirage of a 
sovereign who is not only the ally, but who, by the force of 
circumstances, may have become, in some measure, the depend- 
ent ally of Great Britain." 

That England, after this event, should have insisted upon 
proceeding with the arbitration,' was scarcely less than an 
indecency and an affront, and one wonders at the good nature 
and blindness to injury which still continued to mark the 
temper and conduct of the United States. 

The question- submitted to the King of the Netherlands re- 
mained to be decided by the King of Holland. 

But the Governor takes encouragement after this protest, 
from the appointment of a Minister, by whom the case was to 



THE NOETH-EASTEKN BOUNDAKY. 47 

be presented to the umpire, from among our own citizens, of 
one so able and well-informed as the Hon. William Pitt Preble. 

Albert Gallatin, an experienced diplomatist, and a man of 
historic reputation, and Judge Preble, of Portland, had been 
designated during the administration of Mr. Adams, to manage 
the case before the umpire ; and when the appointment of 
Judge Preble as Minister was made by President Jackson, the 
valuable assistance of Mr. Daveis was secured to him by the 
government. 

Governor Smith took leave of this subject in his message for 
1831, by saying that he was not aware that anything at present 
remained to be done by the Legislature that could facilitate the 
inquiry, or affect the result. 

On the tenth of January, 1831, the King of Holland made 
his report — award it could not be called. He found himself 
unable or unwilling to decide where the line ought to be run, 
but said : 

" We are of opinion that it will be suitable (il conviendra) to 
adopt as the boundary of the two States, a line drawn due north 
from the source of the river St. Croix, to a point where it inter- 
sects the middle of the thalweg (i. e. deepest channel) of the river 
St. John, ascending it to the point where the river St. Francis 
empties itself into the river St. John, thence the middle of the 
thalweg of the river St. Francis to the source of its uppermost 
branch, which source we indicate on the map A by the X? authen- 
ticated by the signature of our minister of Foreign Affairs, thence 
a line drawn due west to a point where it unites with a line claimed 
by the United States of America, and delineated on the map A, 
thence said line to the point at which, according to said maps, it 
coincides with that claimed by Great Britain, thence the line traced 
in the map by the two powers to the north-westernmost source of 
the Connecticut River." 



48 THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 

The King further expresses the opinion that it would be suit- 
able that the line from the Connecticut Eiver to the St. Law- 
rence should be so drawn as to include in the United States, 
the fort at Souse's Point, and its kilometrical radius. 

It is abundantly certain from the whole report and proceed- 
ings that the King could not adopt the British claim, and did 
not wish to accept that of the United States, and so, to avoid a 
decision, contented himself by making a recommendation. A 
higher indirect concession to the American claim it would be 
difficult to imagine. 

On the twelfth of January, our Minister, Judge Preble, made 
a protest against the proceeding, " as constituting a departure 
from the power delegated by the high parties interested." 

Unofficial intelligence of the report of the King of Holland 
was received in Maine during the session of the Legislature, and 
occasioned much uneasiness. A joint-select committee made a 
vigorous report, in which were no sounds of uncertainty or fear, 
through Col. Deane. It said : 

" If the Government of the United States can cede a portion of 
an independent State to a foreign government, she can, by the same 
principle, cede the whole ; or if to a foreign government, she can, 
by the same principle, annex one State to another until the whole 
are consolidated, and she becomes the sole Sovereign and lawgiver, 
without any check to her exercise of power." 

It is not to be answered that the treaty-making power has, 
from the necessity of the case, ample authority to decide dis- 
putes between the nation and other nations, whether they refer 
to boundaries or anything else. This nation has no right under 
the treaty-making power to cede the territory of any State — the 
title to which in the State, it affirms. In this case, the United 
States, by Congress as well as by the Executive Department, as 
had also the Legislatures of Maine and Massachusetts and of 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 49 

most the other States, declared repeatedly and in the most em- 
phatic and unequivocal terms, that the right of Maine was " clear 
and unquestionable." Her title was as clear to Madawaska as 
to Portland, and a cession or sale of the latter would be quite as 
objectionable and unconstitutional as a transfer of the former. 
This committee reported Eesolves, which were passed, de- 
claring " That the convention of 1827 tended to violate the 
Constitution of the United States, and to impair the sovereign 
rights and powers of the State of Maine, and that Maine is not 
bound by the Constitution to submit to the decision which has 
been, or shall be, made under that convention." Also, that 
whereas the submission was to the King of the Netherlands, an 
independent Sovereign, exercising dominion over six millions of 
people, and whereas, by the force of liberal opinions in Belgium, 
he was deprived of more than half of his dominions, and his 
dependence on Great Britain for holding his power, even in 
Holland, was increased, and, inasmuch as he had made no deci- 
sion before his kingdom was dismembered by his own consent, 
and his public character changed, it was resolved that the 
award " cannot and ought not to be considered obligatory upon 
the government of the United States, either on the principles of 
right and justice, or of honor." And further, " that no decision 
made by an umpire under any circumstances, if the decision 
dismembers a State, has or can have any constitutional force or 
obligation upon the State thus dismembered, unless the State 
adopt and sanction the decision." 

On the eighteenth of March, Mr. Van Buren, Secretary of 
State, communicated the report of the King of Holland to the 
Governor of Maine, with a request, in substance, that pending- 
its consideration at Washington, Maine should keep quiet and 
behave herself. 

Governor Smith transmitted the papers to the Legislature on 
4 



50 THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 

the twenty-fifth of March, with a message which endorsed and 
commended the advice of Mr. Van Buren as to good behavior 
on the part of the people of Maine and their representatives. 
But the Legislature was scarcely in a temper to appreciate this 
advice in the sense in which it was given. It had yet some 
sense of honor, duty and self respect ; and on the thirtieth 
of March it made its answer to the President, in which it 
plainly told him that " there are rights which a free people 
cannot yield, and there are encroachments upon such rights 
which ought to be resisted and prevented, or the people 
have no assurance of the continuance of their liberties." The 
report took up the opinion of the King, and the question 
of his right to act after he had ceased to be Sovereign of the 
Netherlands, and by facts incontestible and by invincible logic, 
showed that the opinion was in no sense binding either upon 
the United States or the State of Maine, and declared that " if 
the United States should adopt the document as a decision, it 
will be in violation of the constitutional rights of the State of 
Maine, which she cannot yield." 

A copy of this report of the Legislature was ordered to be 
sent to the President of the United States and to the Governors 
of the several States. 

Governor Smith, it will be remembered, had, in his annual 
message a few weeks before, referred to the change which had 
taken place in the relations of the umpire since the submission 
was made, and expressed the unwillingness the State would 
feel to submit the question to the decision of a sovereign who 
was the ally, and might become the dependent ally, of the con- 
testing party. The legislative report had but echoed this 
opinion. Acting in its spirit, and in view of the whole situation, 
and in full harmony, as was supposed, with the views of the 
Governor (for as yet he had not heard from Mr. Van Buren), 



THE NORTH-EASTERN* BOUNDARY. 51 

the Legislature, on the fifteenth of March, 1831, passed an Act, 
which received the approval of the Governor, to incorporate the 
town of Madawaska, by which the inhabitants thereof were 
declared to be "subject to the same duties and nubilities, and 
vested with the privileges and immunities which other incorpi »- 
rated towns are within this State." Any Justice of Peace within 
the County of Penobscot, or any Justice throughout the State, 
was empowered to issue his warrant to any inhabitant of the 
place, directing him to notify a meeting for the choice of officers. 
In conformity to this Act, a warrant was issued by William I). 
Williamson, Esquire, a Justice of the Peace throughout the 
State, directed to Walter Powers, an inhabitant of Madawaska, 
to notify the inhabitants of that town to meet at the house of 
Peter Lezart to organize the town and elect town officers. The 
meeting was duly called and held in August, but its proceedings 
were interrupted and delayed by interference and threats on the 
part of Leonard B. Coombs, a Captam of Militia, and Francis 
Pace, a Justice of the Peace, holding commissions from the Prov- 
ince of New Brunswick. But the inhabitants present, about fifty 
in number, persevered in their work and elected town officers. 
Another town meeting, at which eighty inhabitants were pres- 
ent, was held on the second Monday of September, 1831, being 
the day of the State election, at the house of Raphael Martin, 
when Peter Lezart was elected a representative to the State 
Legislature. Rice was present at this meeting, also, interrupt- 
ing it, and using language of menace and abuse. He took 
the names of the persons voting at the meeting. On the 
twenty-fifth of the month, a military force was collected at the 
chapel in Madawaska, by Provincial authority, and repaired to 
the house of one Simon Herbert, further up the river, where 
they were attended by the. Lieutenant-Governor of New Bruns- 
wick. This force succeeded in arresting Daniel Savage, Jesse 



52 THE NORTI?-E ASTERN BOUNDARY. 

Wheelock, Barnabas Himnewell, Daniel Bean and several others, 
and held them prisoners for the offence of acting at the town 
meeting. John Baker escaped to the woods, and finally came to 
Portland, where, on the twelfth of October, he gave to the Gov- 
ernor a detailed statement of the facts, to which he made oath 
before Francis 0. J. Smith, Esquire, Justice of the Peace. 
Wheelock and Savage, who were arrested as above stated, ad- 
dressed a letter to Boscoe G. Greene, Secretary of State, in which 
they informed him of the circumstances of their arrest. They 
said : 

" His Excellency, Sir Archibald Campbell, Lieutenant-Governor 
and Commander-in-Chief of the Province of New Brunswick, ar- 
rived here on the twenty-third instant, with one Colonel, one Cap- 
tain of the Militia, the Attorney-General of the Province and Mr. 
McLaughlan ; also, by the Sheriff of the County of York. On the 
twenty-fourth they directed warrants to be issued against all those 
who had acted at said meetings. * * We were arrested on the 
twenty-fifth. * * On the twenty-sixth the Sheriff and Captain 
Coombs and some militia ascended the river to Mr. Baker's to 
arrest those in that neighborhood; thence to St. Francis River, 
expecting to return to-day, when we are to be immediately sent to 
Fredericton gaol. When the rest of our unfortunate countrymen 
arrive we will enlist their names and numbers, together with what 
other information shall come to our knowledge. The families of 
them will be left in a deplorable situation unless their country will 
immediately release them. * * We are now descending the 
river, twenty miles above Woodstock." 

Of these persons, Savage, Wheelock and Himnewell were 
arraigned before the Supreme Court of New Brunswick, and 
sentenced to pay a fine of fifty pounds and be imprisoned three 
months, and were accordingly thrown into prison at Fredericton. 

Down to the period covered by these proceedings, with the 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 53 

single exception, if such it may be regarded, of the Governor's 
message in March, I find no blot on the history of this State, 
nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to hide the head for, but 
a constant exhibition of elevated and dignified patriotism — a 
proper regard for the integrity and honor of the Commonwealth. 

But after this, succeeds a term which we might well desire 
to have expunged from our annals. 

The Senate of the United States had rejected the recom- 
mendation of the King of Holland, and new negotiations were 
in contemplation at Washington, when the intelligence was 
received there from the Governor of Maine of the proceedings 
at Madawaska, and the arrest of Wheelock and others. The 
administration was greatly disturbed, and communicated its 
displeasure to Governor Smith. He, on the twelfth of October, 
replied that: 

"An Act was passed by the Legislature of this State at the last 
session to incorporate th# town of Madawaska, which is bounded, 
in part, by the line of the State. By this Act and some others, I 
understood it was intended by the Legislature to assert the claim 
of the State to jurisdiction over that portion of the territory which 
they knew to be within the limits of Maine ; and that it was not 
to be carried into effect until circumstances should render it proper 
and expedient. This measure is said to have been adopted by the 
inhabitants of that territory, voluntarily organizing themselves 
into a corporation ; was unexpected by me, and done without my 
knowledge." 

What a spectacle is here ! The Secretary of State of the 
United States had written the Governor of Maine a sharp letter, 
reproving the State, in effect, for its independent and proper 
action. And the Chief Magistrate, who but a few months 
before had been so earnest, who had approved an act to incor- 



54 THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 

porate the town, when the people thereof, in good faith, sup- 
posing the act of the Legislature meant what it said — as indeed 
it did, as everybody conversant with its history well knew — 
went to work, and in conformity to its provisions organized 
the town — instead of planting himself firmly upon the act of 
the Legislature and the doings of his people, starts back, like 
Fear in Collins' Ode, 

" E'en at the sound himself had made." 

To this excuse and protestation, Secretary Livingston made re- 
ply in a letter of such tone and language as no Governor of a State 
should permit to be addressed to him, without indignant remon- 
strance, to say the least. He told him that the President could 
not " consider the continuance of the occupation " (of Maine) 
' by the officers, civil and military, of the British Province as an 
invasion; but will take all proper measures to procure the re- 
lease of the ill-advised persons who have been the cause of this 
disturbance." 

Ill-advised persons ! Who gave them the ill advice ? The 
Legislature of Maine and the Governor of Maine ! These and 
no others, and in the most unequivocal and solemn manner. 
Of the important facts the Secretary had learned enough to ren- 
der his language as direct and pointed a rebuke to the Legisla- 
ture and Executive authorities of the State, as it was possible to 
make. How, may it be imagined, would Enoch Lincoln have 
received words like these — words that should 

" Kindle cowards, and steel with valor 
The melting spirits of women " ? 

But whatever the amount of reproof and insolence the Sec- 
retary of State was pleased to visit upon the Governor of Maine, 
he made ample amends for it in his disgraceful obsequiousness 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 55 

to the British minister. To show the humiliation with which 
the government was pleased to clothe itself, and, with the con- 
sent of her Executive, the State of Maine, it is only necessary 
to quote from a letter of Mr. Livingston to Mr. Bankhead, the 
British Minister, on the fifteenth of October, 1831. Transmit- 
ting extracts from Governor Smith's letter, before referred to, 
he says : 

" You will perceive that the election of town officers in the settle- 
ment of Madawaska, of which complaint was made in the papers 
enclosed in your letter, was made under color of a general law, 
which was not intended, by either the executive or legislative au- 
thority, to be executed in that settlement, and that the whole was 
the work of inconsiderate individuals." 

One can hardly conceive a statement more crowded with 
errors of fact than this. In the first place, as we have seen, 
there was a gross error in the assertion that the incorporation 
of the town of Madawaska was under a general law, and not by 
a special act ; and that the action of the inhabitants was not 
contemplated by the State, was an error equally manifest. 

If the Legislature of Maine, with the approval of the Gov- 
ernor, set itself to the work of passing a special act of incorpo- 
ration, was it in accordance with a proper respect for the honor 
of the State, to assert that it was not intended that the power 
should be exercised ; that it was simply a paper defiance from a 
a safe distance — a mere brutum fulmen ? That while Judge 
Williamson, the historian of Maine, was issuing his warrant to 
Mr. Powers for the organization of the town, and the purpose 
was being executed in the knowledge of the whole State, and 
all the public journals were seriously discussing it, the State 
itself was, after all, only playing the lion's part, after the man- 
ner of Nick Bottom, the weaver ? 



56 THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 

Instead of demanding, in a firm and becoming tone, the im- 
mediate release of the citizens of Maine, who had been impris- 
oned in a foreign gaol for the offence of acting in obedience to 
the laws of their State, the Secretary says to Mr. Bankhead : 
"I respectfully suggest the propriety of your commending to the 
Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick the release of the 
prisoners." 

Having, by these apologies and humble petitions from the 
American Secretary, obtained what he assumed to regard as a 
practical recognition of the provincial claim of exclusive juris- 
diction, the British government graciously consented to the 
release. This is not pleasant reading. It makes one neither 
happy nor proud. The State made no protest — uttered no word 
of grave remonstrance. 

Upon the assembling of the Legislature of 1832, the Governor 
recited at some length, in his message, the transactions of the 
preceding autumn, and informed that body that, through the 
intervention of the President, Wheelock and the other prisoners 
had been released. 

On the twenty-second of February, the Governor made a 
communication to the Legislature, in secret session, in which he 
said he had been informed by Judge Preble, the agent of the 
State at Washington, that the award of the King would event- 
ually be adopted by our government ; that Maine would re- 
ceive pecuniary indemnity if she would cede her territory 
lying outside of the line of the award. He urged promptness 
of action on the part of the Legislature. 

The President was anxious that some arrangement should be 
made by which Maine would consent to abide by the line of 
the King ; and the Congressional delegation from the State, with 
the exception of Mr. Evans (who opposed the proposition in a 
letter marked by the incisiveness and vigor which charac- 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 57 

terized alike the forensic and political efforts of this very 
great man), wrote Judge Preble in favor of submitting the plan 
to the Legislature. 

The question was discussed by the Legislature, with closed 
doors, and finally a resolution was passed authorizing the Gov- 
ernor to appoint three Commissioners to see what terms and 
conditions could be arranged, and report to the Legislature for 
its action. The commission was constituted by the appointment 
of three eminent and able gentlemen — William Pitt Preble, 
Reuel Williams and Nicholas Emery. The President appointed 
on the part of the United States, as Commissioners to confer 
with those from Maine, the Secretary of State, Edward Living- 
ston ; the Secretary of the Treasury,. Louis McLane ; the Sec- 
retary of the Navy, Levi Woodbury. When our Commission- 
ers reached Washington, they found there a public opinion that 
demanded urgently and almost imperatively, a settlement of 
the vexed and long-disturbing question. The commerce and 
business of the country, — all its industrial, commercial and 
financial interests, in fact, — called for a removal of the causes 
of apprehension that the peace of the country might be rup- 
tured ; and New York, as Governor Parris had predicted years 
before she would make known, wanted Rouse's Pohit. The 
whole power of the administration, a nearly united South, and 
the commercial interests of the North, were brought to bear 
upon the Commissioners. They were warned that, if they did 
not consent to the new line, the question would be submitted 
to another arbitration. Thus pressed, they finally consented to 
submit certain propositions to the Legislature of the State. 
Perhaps they could have done no less under all the circum- 
stances. It was not for them they considered, as I imagine, to 
debar the State of an opportunity for considering, through its 
Legislature, the propositions which the Commissioners of the 



58 THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 

United States were prepared to make. These were in substance 
a new line, which, if not entirely coincident with, was yet on 
the basis of the King of Holland's recommendation, and one 
million of acres of land in Michigan, which, at the minimum 
government price, was worth $1,250,000, and probably much 
more than this sum in fact. If a conventional line, not involv- 
ing an exchange of territory, were admissible at all, these terms 
should not probably be regarded as unreasonable in amount, 
however humiliating in respect to the source from which they 
proceeded. 

But Maine had never ceased to feel an invincible repugnance 
to the idea of selling her territory for cash, or cash equivalents, 
still less of abandoning her citizens, exchanging them as well 
as her soil for counters. And so when it was known, in the 
winter of 1832, that the Legislature had resolved itself into 
secret session to consider propositions for a settlement of the 
question by a conventional line, the fears of the people were 
aroused and an intense excitement was created. Eeports, more 
or less correct, of the doings in secret session were circulated 
among the people and appeared in the newspapers. Startling 
headings arrested the eyes of the people. " Maine Sold Out ! " 
" Maine in the Market ! " " Our Fellow Citizens Trans- 
ferred to a Foreign Power for Cash or Land ! ! " 

An anonymous letter, evidently written by a member or 
officer of the Legislature, indicating the passage of a Resolve 
(such as was in fact passed on the third of March), was 
printed in the Kennebec Journal, which, in connection with 
the events growing out of its publication, inflamed still more 
the public feeling. The name of the author was demanded of 
the editor, Hon. Luther Severance, who, upon his refusal to 
divulge it, was committed to the Augusta gaol for contempt, 
from which, however, he was soon released. 



THE NOETH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 59 

In this excited condition of the popular mind, the Legislature 
adjourned, and its members returned to their homes to meet 
there alarmed and indignant constituencies. A speech from 
Jacob Ludden, a Democratic representative from Canton, in 
Oxford County, delivered in secret session, and published in the 
Portland Advertiser of the twenty-seventh of February, had 
touched the popular chord, and was quoted everywhere. An 
Honest Man, was the heading of the speech. Said Mr. Ludden : 

" Our agent at Washington says we can make a better bargain 
if we take land than if we trade for cash ! What, sir ! bargain our 
American territory and American citizens for land or cash ? Sell 
our citizens without their consent ! Sell them to the British, and 
to become subjects of a British King! Sir, history informs us of 
only one solitary instance in this republic where a bargain of this 
kind was ever attempted ; and that was at West Point, in the 
secret session held by Benedict, Arnold and Major Andre. Our 
title to the territory is indisputable. It was purchased for us. 
The price was blood — the blood of our fathers. And shall we, sir, 
like Esau, sell our birthright for a mess of pottage ? No sir ! 
heaven protect us from such disgrace. * * Sir, whoever this 
day votes for this disgraceful bargain will, I trust, live to see the 
time when the finger of scorn shall be pointed at him, and shall 
hear the contemptuous expression, 'You are one of the number 
who voted to sell a part of your country ! ' Yes, sir, we sell not 
only a part of our country, but our fellow citizens with it ; and 
among these citizens a member of this House, legally chosen by 
order of the constituted authorities of this State, and who has as 
good a right to his seat as any member on this floor. Sir, I enter 
my solemn protest against these whole proceedings." 

Public meetings were held in many of the towns — especially 
in the country towns — of the State, indignantly and solemnly 
protesting against and denouncing " these whole proceedings," 



60 THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 

calling upon the State authorities, upon our members of Con- 
gress and the federal government to arrest them, and to take 
prompt and vigorous 'measures to vindicate the honor of the 
State and nation, and to preserve their territory in its integrity. 

At a Fourth of July celebration, in Augusta, the sentiment, 
"Our brethren of Madawasha — a little too wliite to be sold ! " was 
drunk with tremendous applause, was published hi the news- 
papers of the State, and of other States, was echoed in highway 
and byway, and repeated in the homes of the people. 

The result was, that the project fell through ; failed utterly, 
not to say ignominiously. In the Legislature of the next year 
a Kesolve was passed — on the fourth of March, 1833 — which 
repealed so much of the Resolve of the previous year under 
which Commissioners had been appointed to arrange provisional 
terms of adjustment, as provided for the submission of their 
report to the Legislature, and passed another Resolve to the 
effect " that no arrangement, provisional arrangement or treaty 
already made, or that may hereafter be made, or in pursuance 
of the Eesolve to which this is additional, shall have any bind- 
ing force, effect or operation until the same shall have been 
submitted to the people of this State in their primary assemblies, 
and approved by a majority of their votes." And yet, within 
ten short years, and without submission to a vote of the people, 
this territory, " invaluable," as Governor Lincoln had declared 
it, these fellow citizens of ours — " a little too white to be sold " 
in 1832 — John Baker, holding title deeds from the two States, 
wife and children — " all my pretty chickens and their dam " — 
Wheelock, Bacon and their families, Peter Lezart, too, the repre- 
sentative, and hundreds more, were transferred and conveyed to 
a foreign Crown ! 

Nothing more of importance happened within the State in 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 61 

1833, but at Washington, as will be seen, propositions of grave 
and dangerous import were being considered. 

When the Legislature of 1834 assembled, it was addressed by 
Governqr Dunlap, in a message which reminded that body of 
the mistakes which had been made, and expressed a hope that, 
since we had escaped the dangers impending therefrom, there 
was " a way now open for the ultimate attainment of our rights." 

How blind and devious was the way in which the State de- 
partment at Washington was disposed to walk, Governor Dun- 
lap did not then know. Subsequent to the rejection, in 1832, of 
the advice of the King of Holland, the Senate passed a resolu- 
tion advismg the President to open a new negotiation " according 
to the Treaty of Peace of 1783." Mr. Livingston was Secretary 
of State, and he renewed the negotiation in a manner which 
only an ascription of the grossest ignorance or stupidity on his 
part could rescue from the imputation of infidelity to the cause 
whose defence had been placed in his hands. He began by a 
half admission that the treaty could not be executed. He 
violated the express instructions under which he was acting, by 
suggesting to the British Minister that Maine would probably 
give her consent to a conventional line. On the thirtieth of 
April, 1833, he wrote a letter to Mr. Vaughan, the British Min- 
ister, in which he intimated that a line might be drawn from 
the monument to the highlands, though these highlands should 
not be found due north from the monument, and when the 
British Minister objected, that such a line might reach highlands 
east of the meridian of the St. Croix, Mr. Livingston hastens 
to reply (the twenty-eighth of May), that " the American gov- 
ernment can make no pretensions to go further east than that (a 
due north) line ; but if, on a more accurate survey, it should be 
found that the line mentioned in the treaty should pass each of 
the highlands therein described, and that they should be found 



62 THE NOKTH-EASTEKN BOUND AEY. 

at some point further west, then the principles to which I refer 
would apply, to wit : that the direction of the line to connect the 
two natural boundaries must be altered, so as to suit their ascer- 
tained position." Well might a committee of the Legislature 
of Massachusetts say, " It is with extreme mortification that we 
contemplate this subject. We see, or think we see, that not only 
the honor of the nation, but the sovereignty of Maine and the 
interest of Massachusetts* have been totally disregarded." 

During the years 1835, 1836 and 1837, matters remained 
very much in statu quo, except that during all this time the 
government and people of New Brunswick were gradually 
pushing their claims to the occupation and jurisdiction of the 
territory in dispute. The London Chronicle of the twenty-eighth 
of May, 1831, had said : " The disputed territory is now in our 
possession, and as we believe right is on our side, we would 
recommend the government not to part with it. Besides, pos- 
session is nine points of the law." This advice had not been 
unheeded by the British authorities on either side of the At- 
lantic. The object seemed to be to gain time and put off nego- 
tiations until the British claims should be strengthened by 
length of possession and renewed and multiplied acts of jurisdic- 
tion and sovereignty. For, notwithstanding the covenants of 
neutrality between the powers, they were constantly violated, 
and with impunity, by the authorities and people of New 
Brunswick. 

So far had these encroachments extended before the close of 
the administration of Governor Dunlap, that, in his annual 
message for 1837, he felt constrained to address the Legislature 
in these strong and earnest terms : 

*It will be remembered that, at this time, Massachusetts was joint owner 
with Maine of the soil of the undivided wild lands of the latter State. 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 63 

" It must be conceded that our people and their State govern- 
ment have exercised a most liberal forbearance upon the subject, 
considering the series of years it has been agitated, and the suc- 
cessive incidental circumstances calculated to excite and aggravate 
popular feeling. Our soil and our sovereignty have been invaded. 
Over a portion of domain of incalculable value, owned jointly by 
this and our parent Commonwealth, an attempt has been made to 
establish an adverse claim. The jurisdiction of the State has been 
rendered inoperative, either for the protection of our soil or of our 
injured inhabitants. Under color of authority from a foreign 
government, our unoffending citizens, in time of peace, have been 
forced from their rightful homes, and dragged beyond the limits of 
the State. Trials for imaginary crimes have been instituted against 
them, and, upon our brethren, guilty of no offence, and charged 
with no wrong, the indignities of a foreign gaol have been imposed. 
Our political system has lodged, in the first instance, the power 
and the duty of protection with the federal government. To that 
government we have appealed, but relief has not come. Our lands 
are sequestered, our sovereignty is insulted and our injured citizens 
are unredressed. In this state of things, is it not due to our own 
self-respect as well as to the cause of justice, that the State of 
Maine should insist on being immediately placed by the govern- 
ment of the United States into the possession of the invaluable 
rights from which she has been so long excluded ? " 

It is not easy to see how the case could have been presented 
more cogently and eloquently than it was in these noble 
words of Governor Dunlap. An earnest and able report was 
made to the Legislature by the joint committee, to which the 
question had been referred ; and the following Eesolves were 
passed by the Legislature : 

"Besolved, That we view with much solicitude the British usur- 
pations and encroachments on the north-easterly part of the terri- 
tory of this State. 



64 THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 

"Resolved, That pretensions so groundless and extravagant in- 
dicate a spirit of hostility which we had no reason to expect from 
a nation with whom we are at peace. 

" Resolved, That vigilance, resolution, firmness and union on the 
part of this State are necessary in this state of the controversy. 

" Resolved, That the Governor be authorized and requested to 
call on the President of the United States to cause the north- 
eastern boundary of this State to be explored and surveyed and 
monuments erected, according to the treat} 7 of 1783. 

"Resolved, That the co-operation of Massachusetts be requested. 

" Resolved, That our Senators be instructed and our Represent- 
atives be requested to endeavor to obtain a speedy adjustment of 
the controversy." 

Copies of the Report and Resolves were ordered to be sent 
to the President, the Governor of Massachusetts, to our Senators 
and Representatives in Congress, aiid to the Governors and 
Senators of all the other States. 

Here was notice, at last, that could not be mistaken, that the 
patience of the State was exhausted, and that the policy which 
had prevailed for several years, could not be continued without 
endangering the harmony of the relations heretofore subsisting 
between the State and the nation. 

The successor of Governor Dunlap was Edward Kent, and he 
came to the office of Governor in 1838, charged with the spirit 
which had been manifested by Governor Dunlap and the Legis- 
lature of 1837. 

In his annual message, he went over the essential points of 
the controversy, as it then stood, with great clearness and force. 
He said : 

"It has required, and still requires, all the talents of her" 
(England's) "statesmen and skill of her diplomatists, to render 
that obscure and indefinite which is clear and unambiguous. I 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 65 

cannot for a moment doubt that if the same question should arise 
in private life, in relation to the boundaries of adjacent farms, 
with the same evidence and the same arguments, it would be de- 
cided in any court, in any civilized country, without hesitation or 
doubt, according to our claims." 

But Great Britain desired, and was determined to have, 
direct communication between her lower and upper Provinces, 
and believed it to be obtainable only by way of the Madawaska 
River and Temiscouata Lake. She sought it for a long time as 
a favor, that is, as a grant without an equivalent. She had 
come to demand it, and with it about one-third of our territory, 
as her right. 

Previous to Governor Kent's term, in the year 1837, Ebenezer 
S. Greeley, of Dover, had been appointed by the State authori- 
ties to take the census of Madawaska, that the people living 
there might receive their portion of the " surplus revenue," as 
it was called, which, by an act of the Legislature, was to be 
divided, per capita, among the people of the State. He. was 
arrested by the Provincial authorities while in' the performance 
of this duty. Referring to the case, the Governor said : 

" A citizen of our State, Ebenezer S. Greeley, now lies imprisoned 
at Fredericton, seized, as it is said, for exercising power delegated 
to him under a law of this State. The facts connected with this 
arrest are unknown to me, and I therefore forbear to comment at 
this time upon them. But if the facts are that he was so seized, 
for such a lawful act, the dignity and sovereignty of the State 
demand his immediate release." 

Here, it will be observed, no humble request, such as was ad- 
dressed to Mr. Bankhead, is contemplated, but a peremptory 
demand. The Governor continues : 

" I am aware that we are met by the assertion that the parties 
have agreed to permit the actual jurisdiction to remain, pending 
5 



66 THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 

the negotiation as it existed before. I have yet seen no evidence 
that such an agreement was formally entered into by the parties. 
But certainly Maine was no party to such an understanding ; and 
at all events, it never could have been intended to be perpetually 
binding, or to extend beyond the termination of the then pending 
negotiation. That negotiation is ended. The old ground of claim 
at Mars Hill is abandoned ; a new allegation is made — that the 
treaty cannot be executed and must be set aside. In the mean- 
time this wardenship" — New Bruuswick, it should be said, had 
appointed one McLaughlan Warden of all this territory — " is estab- 
lished, and all claim to absolute jurisdiction, not merely at Mada- 
waska, but over the whole territory north, is asserted and enforced. 
If this jurisdiction is to be tolerated and acquiesced in indefinitely, 
we can easily see why negotiation lags, and two years elapse be- 
tween a proposition and the reply." 

Eeferring to the latest phase of the British contention, of 
which Governor Kent makes mention, viz: "that the treaty 
cannot be executed," it is curious to note the changes that had 
taken place in the pretensions of Great Britain since the treaty 
was made. At first, and until the Treaty of Ghent, the con- 
ceded line was north of the river St. John, and upon the St. 
Lawrence water-shed. Subsequently to 1817, for some ten 
years, it was at Mars Hill. After this, it was discovered that there 
had been a mistake made in determining the source of the river 
St. Croix; it was, in fact, at the head of the western branch, 
and so the highlands contemplated in the treaty of peace were 
those which divided the waters of the Penobscot and the Ken- 
nebec, on one side, from those of the St. John on the other. 
But these claims were so palpably absurd and contradictory, 
and were so thoroughly exploded by the Legislatures of Maine 
and Massachusetts, by their Governors and statesmen, that Eng- 
land was fain to abandon them, one after another, and rely 
upon the assumption that the treaty could not be executed, by 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 67 

reason of the uncertain and contradictory character of its lan- 
guage. 

To return to the message of Governor Kent, He urged that 
the first duty of the State was to claim the immediate and 
efficient action of the general government ; said that her rights 
must be vindicated and maintained, " and, if all appeals for aid 
and orotection are in vain and her constitutional rights are 
disregarded, forbearance may cease to be a virtue, and, hi the 
language of the lamented Lincoln, Maine ' may be compelled 
to deliberate on an alternative which will test the strictness of 
her principles and the firmness of her temper.' " • 

" I confess," said the Governor, in bringing his observations 
on this subject to a close, " that my convictions are strong that 
Maine has been wronged by a foreign government and neglected 
by her own ; and I do not understand the diplomatic art of 
softening the expression of unpalatable truths." 

The earnest language of Governors Dunlap and Kent, and 
the Eesolves of the Legislature, had the effect to awaken the 
general government to a more vigorous effort than it had put 
forth for a long time, towards effecting an adjustment of the 
question. John Forsyth, of Georgia, had become Secretary of 
State, and on the first of March, 1838, he addressed a long 
communication to Governor Kent, enclosing copies of a pro- 
tracted correspondence between him and Mr. Fox, the British 
Minister, on the subject of the boundary, and requesting the 
Governor to take the sense of the State as to the opening of 
direct negotiation for a conventional line. He conceded that 
such a line could not be established without the assent of the 
State of Maine. This communication, with the accompanying 
correspondence, was by the Governor transmitted to the Legis- 
lature, with a message, in which he reviewed, to some extent, 
the history of previous negotiations, and stated the objections 



68 THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 

which, to his mind, bore against any volunteering of proposi- 
tions for a conventional line. He said : " I fear that if we 
abandon the treaty language, so clear and so decided in our 
favor, and so much at variance with their claim, we shall leave 
a certainty for an uncertainty, and throw doubt, confusion and 
embarrassment over our claim and our course of action, and 
yield to Great Britain the great obstacle we now present to her 
grasping spirit — the solemn treaty of 1783." 

The Legislature, concurring in opinion with Governor Kent, 
on .the twenty-fourth of March, 1838, 

"Resolved, That it is not expedient to give the assent of the 
State to the federal government, to treat with that of Great 
Britain for a conventional line, but that this State will insist on 
the line established by the treaty of 1783." 

It also resolved, that, believing it to be a grave question 
whether the treaty of Ghent, referring to arbitration, had not 
clone its office, and was therefore no longer in force, the State 
was not prepared to give her consent to a new arbiter. Our 
members of Congress were requested to urge the passage of the 
bill before that body, providing for the survey of the north- 
eastern boundary of the United States. 

In the event that the bill should not be passed, and the fed- 
eral government should fail, either in conjunction with that of 
Great Britain, or alone, to make the survey before the next 
September, it was declared to be " the imperative duty of the 
Governor, without further delay, to appoint suitable Commis- 
sioners and a surveyor for ascertaining, running and locating 
the north-eastern boundary line of this State, and to cause the 
same to be carried into operation." 

Eesolves were passed at this session, calling upon Congress to 
erect a strong fortification in the eastern section of the State. 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 69 

It will be remembered that, pending the proceedings under the 
convention of 1827 for an arbitration, there was an understanding 
or arrangement, that during the arbitration each party was to 
practice forbearance and moderation. The United States agreed 
only to exercise its good offices, inculcating a spirit of modera- 
tion in Maine, in the assurance that it would be reciprocated. 
For this we have the explicit testimony of Mr. Clay, Mr. Van 
Buren and other Secretaries. Mr. Forsyth, in a letter to Mr. 
Fox, denies that there was ever any relinquishment of jurisdic- 
tion, either express or implied, and affirms that " the United 
States has, on every public occasion, asserted that both the right 
to exclusive possession and the exercise thereof belonged to 
Maine and the United States." 

But this understanding in regard to mutual forbearance, so 
far from being respected by the Provincial and British authori- 
ties, was only made the pretext and excuse for steadily renewing 
and increasing the claims of New Brunswick to ownership and 
jurisdiction, and of denying all right of occupation and juris- 
diction on the part of the State of Maine ; so that, within ten 
years from this arrangement, we find Sir John Harvey, Lieuten- 
ant-Governor of New Brunswick, claiming to have, under an 
agreement of the two governments, the right to exclusive pos- 
session of the territory until the time of a final decision in 
regard to the boundary ; and that, to secure the political enjoy- 
ment of such right, he had placed the entire territory, to a point 
many miles south of the Aroostook Biver, under the supervi- 
sion and control of an officer called a " Warden." This insolent 
and audacious claim was made known to the State and federal 
authorities only to be denied and refuted, and it put the former 
on the inquiry whether the State, by non-action hi presence of 
such claim, should yield to it a practical acquiescence. The result 
was the appointment of a Surveyor, Dr. S. S. Whipple, of East- 



70 THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 

port, to survey several townships of land on or near the Aroos- 
took Kiver. While Dr. Whipple was engaged in the perform- 
ance of this service, he received a communication from James 
McLaughlan, " Warden of the Disputed Territory," as he called 
himself, " protesting and warning " him forthwith to desist from 
his proceedings. To which Dr. Whipple made answer — that 
• acknowledging no government or power but that of the State 
under which he had the honor of acting, sufficient to control 
his duty or countermand the orders which governed his present 
movements, he should continue to carry out the instructions 
that had been given him. 

In the meantime, Governor Kent had transmitted the report 
and resolutions of the Legislature asking that the boundary line 
should be run, to the President and to our Members of Congress. 
He made representation of our unprotected frontier, and re- 
quested that lines of defence and military posts should be estab- 
lished ; and he invited Hon. Charles S. Daveis, of Portland, to 
visit Washington in behalf of the State, to explain and urge 
these requests. 

Mr. Forsyth, the Secretary of State, seemed more deeply 
impressed than his immediate predecessor had been with the 
strength of the claims of Maine. He received these communi- 
cations of the Governor hi an appreciative spirit, and Iris agent 
with the consideration due to his personal character, and with 
the courtesy which distinguished the character and bearing of 
the accomplished Secretary. 

Among the results of these prompt and vigorous measures on 
the part of the Governor of Maine, were (1) a letter from Major 
General Macomb, advising him that Brigadier General John E. 
Wi Mil, Inspector General, would be instructed to repair to the 
State of Maine, and make a reconnoissance with a view of ascer- 
taining its military features and resources, project a plan for its 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 71 

defence by the establishment of military posts and communica- 
tions, arsenals, depots of arms, munitions, &c, — duties which 
were soon afterwards performed. (2.) In the language of 
Governor Kent, " The question was rescued from the death-like 
stupor in which it had so long rested ; a new impulse was given 
to the cause. For the first time, the whole subject was made 
the foundation of a Congressional report, and elicited in investi- 
gation and debate the talents and eloquence of some of our 
ablest statesmen. * * * It was assumed and treated as a 
national matter which involved the vital interests of one mem- 
ber of the confederacy, and the plighted faith and constitutional 
obligations of the Union to make the controversy its own." 
Kef erring to the able and decided report of Mr. Buchanan (from 
which I have already quoted), the Governor says : " The Ee- 
solves, finally adopted in both branches without a dissenting 
vote, fully assert the unquestionable justice of our cause, and 
the validity of our title." 

Eemarking upon the Senate debate, alluded to by Governor 
Kent, Mr. Daveis, on his return to Maine, said in his report : 
"Among the Senators most conspicuous in the part they took 
in support of the views expressed in the report of the com- 
mittee," were Mr. Eeuel Williams, Mr. Webster, Mr. John 
Davis and Mr. Clay. Of Mr. Davis, he observes : " Without 
derogation from the merits of any other honorable member of 
that body, it may be due to say that he distinguished himself 
throughout the debate as the inflexible and unflinching champion 
of the rights of Maine, and of the position she had assumed, 
and the principles she had maintained through circumstances 
of great trial to her fortitude and forbearance." 

The general government having neglected to take measures 
for ascertaining and running the boundary line by the first of 
September, the Governor, on the third of that month, appointed 



72 THE NORTH-EASTEKN BOUNDAKY. 

John G. Deane, Milford P. Norton and James Irish, Esquires, 
Commissioners to perform that duty, in pursuance of the pro- 
visions of the Eesolve of the twenty-third of March, 1838. 

These gentlemen, of whom the two last named had been 
land agents of the State, on the thirteenth of September, and 
after a conference with the Governor, proceeded to the per- 
formance of the service with which they had been charged, and 
on the thirty-first of December made their report. 

In communicating this report to the Legislature of 1839, 
Governor Kent gives the substantial facts that appear in it. 
He says: 

" Their report, which I have the pleasure to transmit to you, 
will be read with interest and satisfaction. By that it appears 
that the exploring line was found marked to near the north-west 
angle ; that the base of the country rises constantly and regularly 
from the monument at the head of the St. Croix to the angle, 
which is from two to three thousand feet above the level of the sea, 
and more than five hundred feet above the Kedgwick, one of the 
streams running into the Bay of Chaleurs, near the said angle and 
the St. Lawrence waters ; that the due north line, if continued to 
the valley below the north-west angle, actually strikes the St. 
Lawrence waters, and that the country is high, and even mountain- 
ous about this spot ; and there is no difficulty in tracing a line 
westwardly along distinct and well-defined highlands, dividing 
waters according to the words of the treaty." 

And thus there was brushed away forever the flimsy and 
worthless pretext which had formed of late years so prominent 
a feature of the British case, viz : that it was impossible to 
find a line that conformed to the language of the treaty. Of 
this fact there never had been any doubt in this State — indeed, 
the proposition was one which was scarcely susceptible of doubt. 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 73 

But the energy and fidelity of our State government at this 
time were not limited by these measures, necessary and im- 
portant as they were. 

It had come to the knowledge of the State Land Agent, the 
Hon. Elijah L. Hamlin — and let me stop here to say that I cannot 
mention the name of this admirable gentleman without some 
allusion to the wisdom, probity and genial humor by which his 
life was so strongly marked, and which has made his memory 
so pleasant to all of his surviving contemporaries, who had 
. the good fortune to be Ms intimate friends, — that trespassing 
on our timber lands within the territory in dispute had been 
carried on for several years, and was then being committed by 
parties from the Province, and sometimes under license from its 
authorities. Accordingly this officer, in concert with George W. 
Coffin, Esquire, Land Agent of Massachusetts, on the fourteenth 
of December, deputed George W. Buckmore, Esquire, to pro- 
ceed to the territory, ascertain and report the facts, and remove 
and sell, under the provisions of an act of the Legislature passed 
in 1831, the teams and supplies of the trespassers. By the 
report of Mr. Buckmore, made on the twentieth of January, 
1839, it appeared that large numbers of men from New Bruns- 
wick were trespassing on these lands, who not only refused to 
desist from cutting timber on them, but defied the powers of the 
State to stay their operations. 

These facts were communicated to the Legislature by Gov- 
ernor Fairfield (who had been elected as successor to Governor 
Kent) on the twenty-third of January, 1839. With this mes- 
sage, the "Aroostook War," an event not unfamecl hi history nor 
unknown to song, may be properly said to have commenced — 
a war which, notwithstanding the ridicule attached to some of 
its episodes, and its tame conclusion, forms a chapter in the his- 
tory of our State which does real hcftior to its border chivalry. 



74 THE NOETH-EASTEEN BOUNDARY. 

The people of the State were thoroughly aroused — they had 
risen to the height of the great argument, and were prepared to 
do their duty to the State and country. 

It should be said that this earnestness and 'unanimity of 
feeling hi Maine were, without doubt, aided by the position 
which had been taken by the sister Commonwealth. Not only 
had Massachusetts come to the rescue in 1831, 1832 and 1833, 
when the rights of our State were in imminent danger, but in 
1838, her Senators and Eepresentatives in Congress had main- 
tamed in debate our claims and rights with power and effect ; 
and in her Legislature, a report of a committee, of which Hon. 
Charles Hudson was chairman, was made, in which the subject 
was treated with conspicuous fullness and cogency, and resolu- 
tions were passed, declaring that the British claim was totally 
unfounded, and would, if persisted in, lead to a disturbance of 
friendly relations between the two countries ; that the govern- 
ment of the United States had no power, under the Constitution, 
to cede to a foreign nation any territory lying within the limits 
of any State ; that the proposition made by a late Executive of 
the United States to the British government, to seek for the 
" Highlands " west of the meridian of the St. Croix, was a de- 
parture from the express language of the treaty, an infringement 
of the rights of Maine and Massachusetts, and in derogation of 
the Constitution of the United States ; that the proposition for 
a conventional line was calculated to strengthen the claim of 
Great Britain, impair the honor of the United States, and put 
in jeopardy the interests of Maine and Massachusetts. The 
Governor of the Commonwealth was directed to send copies of 
the report and resolutions to the President of the United States, 
the Governors of the several States and to the members of 
Congress from Massachusetts, and request the latter to use all 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 75 

honorable means to bring the controversy to a just and speedy 
termination. 

Governor Fairfield, in his annual message of 1839, following 
closely in the footsteps of his predecessor, said : 

"If, however, the general government under no circumstances 
should be disposed to take the lead in measures less pacific tban 
those hitherto pursued, yet I trust we are not remediless. If 
Maine should take possession of her territory up to the line of the 
treaty of 1783, resolved to maintain it with all the force she is 
capable of exerting, any attempt on the part of the British govern- 
ment to wrest that possession from her must bring the general 
government to her aid and defence, if the solemn obligations of 
the Constitution of the United States are to be regarded as of any 
validity." 

On the twenty-fourth of January, the Legislature passed a 
Eesolve directing the Land Agent to employ forthwith, a suffi- 
cient force to arrest, detain and imprison all persons found 
trespassing on the territory of this State, as bounded by the 
treaty of 1783. 

Under the authority of this Eesolve, the Land Agent, with 
two hundred chosen men, repaired to the Aroostook Eiver, 
where they understood were some three hundred men from the 
Province, armed and arrayed for the purpose of resistance. On 
the approach of the Maine " Posse," as it was called, the Pro- 
vincial force retired towards the New Brunswick line, followed 
by the Land Agent, the Hon. Eufus Mclntire, and his assist- 
ants, G. G. Cushman and Thomas Bartlett, Esquires, who went 
to, the house of one Fitzherbert, where they put up for the night. 
This place was three or four miles in advance of the encamp- 
ment of their company. In the night, the trespassers — who had 
become acquainted with these facts — went, to the number of 
fifty or more, to Fitzherbert's, seized the Land Agent and his 



76 THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 

assistants, and transported them across the border, and thence 
to Fredericton. Col. Ebenezer Webster, a prominent citizen of 
Orono in this State, who was at Woodstock when the prisoners 
were brought there, attempted to procure their release. But his 
appeals to the authorities, so far from effecting the discharge of 
the prisoners, led to his own arrest, and he was sent with the 
others to Fredericton, where they were all thrown into prison. 

When these facts became known at Augusta, Governor Fair- 
field requested Hon. Jonathan P. Eogers, a distinguished citizen 
of Bangor and a former Attorney General of the State, to visit 
Fredericton and ascertain the facts, as understood there, in rela- 
tion to the abduction of the Land Agent and his party, and to 
demand their instant release. This mission of Mr. Rogers re- 
sulted hi the release of these gentlemen on their parole. The 
Provincial " Warden," McLaughlan, had in the meantime been 
arrested by the Land Agent's posse and sent to Bangor. He 
was detained for a short time, and then released on parole, by 
order of Governor Fairfield. 

On the thirteenth of February, the Governor of New Bruns- 
wick issued a proclamation, in which it was recited that he had 
ordered a sufficient military force to proceed to the scene of 
certain alleged outrages, to repel foreign invasion, &c. 

This proclamation and the arrest of the Land Agent and 
his assistants were made the subjects of a spirited message by 
Governor Fairfield to the Legislature, on the eighteenth of 
February. 

" How long," he inquired, " are we to be thus trampled upon 
— our rights and claims derided — our powers contemned — and 
the State degraded ? * * We cannot tamely submit to be 
driven from our territory, while engaged in the civil employment 
of looking after and protecting our property, without incurring 
a large measure of ignominy and disgrace." 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 77 

The Legislature, on 'the twentieth of February, passed a 
Eesolve providing for the raismg and forwarding forthwith of a 
military force to the territory to prevent further depredations ; 
and the sum of eight hundred thousand dollars was appropriated 
to carry out the purposes of the Eesolve and of the Eesolve 
of the twenty-fourth of January. 

A Eesolve was passed on the twenty-second of February, 
requesting the Governor to inform the President of the action 
of Maine, and to request the aid of the general government in 
support of the rights of the State. In transmitting these 
Eesolves and other documents to the President of the United 
States, Governor Fairfield says : 

"In this state of things, I have to inform your Excellency that 
our citizens now upon this territory, engaged in the service of the 
State, will not leave it without accomplishing their object, unless 
compelled so to do by a superior force ; that one thousand drafted 
men will march to the Aroostook on Wednesday, the twenty-first 
instant, to aid and assist the Land Agent in carrying into effect 
the Resolve of the twenty-fourth of January. I shall forthwith 
proceed to order a further draft of the militia of at least ten thou- 
sand men, who will hold themselves in readiness to march. Such 
further measures as may be found necessary to take and maintain 
the rights of this State in the premises, I assure your Excellency 
I shall not fail to take, and that with as much promptness as 
circumstances will permit." 

The Governor then makes a formal call upon the President 
" for that aid and assistance which the whole States have guar- 
anteed to each in such an emergency." 

Orders were issued by the Governor and Commander-in-Chief 
for calling out and mobilizing the militia of the State. Major 
General Isaac Hodsdon, of the Third Division, was placed in 
command of the troops that were ordered out, and which con- 



78 THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 

sisted of about eleven hundred men from the Third Division and 
thirteen companies from the Second Division, embracing cavalry, 
artillery, infantry and riflemen. ' These troops were stationed at 
different points on the frontier, from Houlton to the Aroostook 
Eiver. A detachment of three hundred and sixty-nine men 
was quartered at Calais. It was under the command of 
Major General Foster. Orders were issued for calling out three 
companies of the Fifth Division, and eleven companies of the 
Sixth. The men were rendezvoused at Augusta on the seventh, 
eighth and ninth of March. A regiment from the Eighth 
Division was ordered to rendezvous at Skowhegan ; but this 
order was countermanded before the troops, or at least before all 
of them, arrived at that place. 

On the eighth of March, Governor Fairfield sent a message 
to the Legislature, communicating sundry documents which had 
been transmitted to him by Mr. Forsyth, and covering a message 
to Congress from the President, a correspondence between Mr. 
Forsyth and Mr. Fox, and a memorandum of an agreement 
drawn up by these gentlemen. This agreement, which did 
not claim to be binding on the State of Maine, recommended 
that " Her Majesty's forces will not seek to expel, by military 
force, the armed party which has been sent by Maine into 
the district bordering on the Aroostook Eiver, but that the 
government of Maine will voluntarily, and without unneces- 
sary delay, withdraw beyond the bounds of the disputed territory 
any armed force now within them ; and that if future necessity 
should arise for dispersing notorious trespassers or protecting 
public property from depredation, the operation shall be con- 
ducted by concert, jointly or severally, according to agree- 
ment between the governments of Maine and New Brunswick." 
An arrangement better calculated than this to prolong the dis- 
pute, and thicken its embarrassments, can scarcely be conceived. 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 79 

It found no favor in this State. After a clear and candid 
review of the situation by the Governor in a message to the 
Legislature which communicated the agreement to that body, 
he expressed the opinion that it ought not to be accepted, and 
gave strong and convincing reasons in support of that opinion. 
But he said he would recommend the following: 

" That when we are fully satisfied, either by the declaration of the 
Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick, or otherwise, that he has 
abandoned all idea of occupying the disputed territory with a military 
force, and of attempting an expulsion of our party, that then the 
Governor be authorized to withdraw our military force, leaving the 
Land Agent with a posse, armed or unarmed, as the case may 
require, sufficient to carry into effect your original design, that of 
driving out or arresting the trespassers, and preserving and pro- 
tecting the timber from their depreciations." 

The Legislature, on the twenty-third of March, passed Eeso- 
lutions asserting that the right of this State to exclusive juris- 
diction over all the disputed territory had been constant, and was 
indefeasible, and that no agreement had ever been made which 
could impair her prerogative to be the sole judge of the time 
when, and the measure in which, that right should be enforced ; 
that hi view of measures recently adopted by the government 
of the Union in relation to this question, and particularly the 
provision made for a special Minister to the court of St. Jaanes, 
and actuated by a desire for an amicable settlement, she would 
forbear to exercise her jurisdiction over that part of her territory 
now usurped by the Province of New Brunswick, so far as she 
could consistently with the maintenance of the Besolve of the 
twenty-fourth of January last ; but that she had seen nothing 
in recent events to cause her to doubt that it was her imperative 
duty to protect her domain, and that no power on earth should 
drive her from an act of jurisdiction so proper in itself, and to 



80 THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 

which her honor was irrevocably committed ; that the action of 
the Governor had their cordial approbation, and that they con- 
curred in the doctrines and sentiments contained in his recent 
message, and would authorize him to withdraw the troops on 
the conditions therein set forth ; that the practicability of running 
and marking the line, in conformity with the treaty, was beyond 
a doubt, and that a crisis had arrived when it was the duty of 
the general government to have the line run, either by a joint 
commission or on her own authority. 

It should be said that the action of the State at this time met 
with the strong and general approval of the country, which 
seemed at last to be thoroughly awakened to the gravity of the 
situation, to a full recognition of the serious wrongs that had 
■ been inflicted upon Maine, to her indisputable title and to her 
long forbearance, and it pledged her its support. Maryland 
and Alabama from the South sent, through resolutions of their 
legislatures, words of sympathy and proffers of co-operation, as 
Virginia and Kentucky had done before ; Massachusetts re- 
peated her just appreciation of the rights of Maine and of 
the wrongs she had suffered ; New York, Pennsylvania and all 
New England had the year before signified their purpose to 
stand for the defence of our soil, while this year Indiana joined 
with .Ohio in " a generous oblation of her whole means and 
resources to the authorities of the Union, in sustaining our 
rights and honor." 

By an act of Congress, upon a report of a House Committee, 
the President was authorized to resist and repel any attempt on 
the part of Great Britain to enforce by arms her claim to exclu- 
sive jurisdiction. The whole military and naval forces of the 
United States were placed at his disposal, with such portions of 
the militia as he might see fit to call out for our protection. 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 81 

An appropriation of ten millions of dollars for the purpose was 
made. 

At this stage of the proceedings in Maine, Major General Win- 
field Scott, U. S. A., appeared upon the scene. At the instance 
of the President he visited Augusta, and after a conference with 
Governor Fairfield and members of the State Legislature, and 
reaching an understanding with Sir John Harvey, the Lieuten- 
ant-Governor of New Brunswick — between whom and himself 
there had long existed a warm personal friendship — an arrange- 
ment was effected by which the Maine troops were withdrawn 
from the disputed lands, and peace restored. 

This agreement is reported by Governor Fairfield, in his 
annual message of 1840, as follows: 

" Soon after the adoption of this resolution — March the twenty- 
third — I received the written assent of the Lieutenant-Governor 
of the Province of New Brunswick to the following proposition 
made to him by General Scott, to wit : 

" ' That it is not the intention of the Lieutenant-Governor of her 
Britannic Majesty's Province of New Brunswick, under the expected 
renewal of negotiations between the Cabinets of London and Wash- 
ington on the said disputed territory, without renewed instructions 
to that effect from his government, to seek to take military pos- 
session of that territory, or to seek, by military force, to expel the 
armed civil posse or the troops of Maine.' 

" It appearing to me that the precise contingency contemplated 
by the Legislature, had occurred, I could not hesitate to recall the 
troops." 

Orders for the return of the troops were issued on the twenty- 
fifth of March, and by the thirteenth of May the last of them 
were paid off and mustered out of service at Bangor. And so 
ended the "Aroostook War," after an expenditure, I think, of 
something more than a million dollars by the State, all of which, 

b 



82 THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 

it may be said, was re-imbursed by the general government. It 
tested, at least, and not to their discredit, the patriotism and 
martial temper of our people. If in any way unsatisfactory in 
its results, it was not their fault. But something, Governor 
Fairfield considered, had been accomplished by it. He said : 

" The occurrences of last winter served to awaken the attention 
of the country to the momentous importance of the question, and 
to induce such an examination of it as to result in a strong and 
universal conviction that the pretence of claim set up by Great 
Britain to the disputed territory is palpably unfounded and unjust, 
and can be persevered in only through an utter disregard of the 
plain and unambiguous terms of the treaty of 1783." 

Not long after the withdrawal of the troops, a proposition 
was submitted by the British government to the President for 
a commission of exploration and survey, but it was coupled with 
such conditions that one would think it must have been made 
for the sole purpose of being rejected, with a view to gain- 
ing time, and the advantages that might be expected from a 
protracted " Wardenship " of the country. That time and its 
accidents were considered, is rendered more than probable by 
the steps taken by Great Britain concurrently with the negotia- 
tion. She sent out a commission of her own — Messrs. Mudge 
and Featherstonehaugh — to obtain, as she expressed it, topo- 
graphical information. Failing in all points as yet taken, or 
imagined, she set herself to work to discover if there might 
not be new ones more tenable or more plausible than the old, 
at any rate, to gam time Nor was the quest a vain one in her 
estimation, for this remarkable commission discovered and re- 
ported that all previous surveys, reports and opinions were 
erroneous, and that the true line, the actual highlands, were far 
south, not only of the river St. John, but of Mars Hill ! And 
when it was answered that this line was not indicated by any 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 83 

highlands such as were mentioned in the treaty as forming the 
boundary, they replied, in substance, that there was every reason 
to believe that once thei highlands where their line was 

drawn, which in the course of time — it may ham been millions 
of years — had teen abraded and worn away. This position was 
seriously taken by the British government, and urged upon the 
United States. That government would seem to have believed 
that no claim, no affront even, could arouse the temper of the 
American government ; and certainly it is not strange that she 
should have formed this opinion. 

Edward Kent, who had been elected Governor for the second 
time, addressed the Legislature of 1841, upon the assembling of 
that body in January. Eef erring to the boundary question, he 
.-aid : 

" It is universally conceded by every American, that the treaty 
of 1783, fairly interpreted and honestly executed, would sustain all 
our claim * * ; that the ready obedience with which our chosen 
soldiery responded to the call of their commander, and the un- 
shaken zeal with which they marched from their comfortable 
homes, in the depth of winter, into the interior forests, and the 
firm determination which was manifested by every man to sustain 
the assertion of our rights, must have satisfied all that, although 
Maine, for the sake of the peace and quiet of the country, * * 
might forbear to enforce her extreme rights, pending negotiations, 
there was yet a point beyond which she would not submit to en- 
croachments * *; that she has a right to ask, when she has 
yielded so much, that her motives should be appreciated, and her 
cause become the cause of the whole country. * * And that 
the assumed line of self-styled geologists, based on imaginary and 
theoretical highlands which never had any existence save in the 
fancies of these men, was unworthy of respect.' " 

At this session of the Legislature, Mr. Daveis, who was a 
member of the Senate, made, as chairman of the committee on 



84 THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 

this question, a comprehensive and exhaustive report; and, 
although a gentleman of extreme moderation and rare courtesy, 
he was moved, after some remarks in reference to the report of 
Mudge and Featherstonehaugh, to say that the committee " are 
only restrained from speaking of it further by the respect that 
is due to the channel through which it comes, rather than to 
the source from which it proceeds ; from speaking — they mean 
to say as it deserves — of what otherwise might be termed its 
impudence, its audacity and its mendacity ; of its sophistries and 
evasions; of its assumptions as well as suppressions; of its 
profligate perversions, and its presumptions and extravagant 
pretensions." 

If ever trifling and contemptuousness can be practiced by 
one nation towards another so far as to become an affront, 
which, by the laws of honor and the duties of self-respect, 
as they are recognized among civilized nations, would justify an 
appeal to arms, the making, publishing and offering as evidence 
of title by the British government, of this impudent and insult- 
ing report, furnished justification for a hundred declarations of 
hostilities such as are settled only on the field of battle. 

Governor Kent, in this message of 1841, refers to a proced- 
ure on the part of Great Britain, which, if further illustration 
were needed of the underhanded and offensive manner which it 
seems to have been her policy and her purpose to practice 
towards this government, would amply supply it. 

It will be remembered that when our troops were withdrawn 
from the Aroostook, in March, 1839, it was upon a written 
proposition made by the Lieutenant-Governor of New Bruns- 
wick, and submitted through General Scott to the Governor of 
Maine, in which he agreed, among other things, in the absence 
of renewed instructions from England, not to seek to take mili- 
tary possession of the territory. This promise was accepted as 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 85 

made in good faith. No renewed instructions were ever given ; 
that would have been war. But the difficulty was avoided hi 
this way. Great Britain quietly transferred the jurisdiction of 
this territory from New Brunswick to Canada, and within a 
few months after this solemn agreement, in the inviolability of 
which Maine and the federal government fully confided, a 
portion of the British army was quartered by order of the Gov- 
ernor General of Canada, at Lake Temiscouata, within the limits 
of this State. 

I make the following extract from the message of Governor 
Kent : 

"The correspondence which has recently been communicated to 
you by my predecessor, discloses another movement on the part of 
the British authorities, well calculated to arrest attention and call 
forth indignant remonstrance on the part of Maine and the Union. 
If I am correctly informed, in a very short time after the conclusion 
of the agreement by which it was, in effect, stipulated that the 
British authorities should not take military possession of what is 
termed by them ' the disputed territory,' and during the existence 
of that arrangement, a detachment of Her Majesty's troops was 
stationed at Temiscouata Lake, within that territory,. and has been 
continued there ever since. And we are now informed that 
another detachment has been moved to and stationed at the 
Madawaska settlement, for the purpose of sustaining the jurisdic- 
tion and supporting the exercise of authority on the part of the 
British magistrates." 

In 1842, Governor Fairfield was again in office. John Tyler 
was President of the United States, and Daniel Webster was 
Secretary of State. 

In his annual message to the Legislature, the Governor said 
that the State had "good grounds to believe a fair and reason- 
able proposition on the part of our government, with a view to 



86 THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 

a final and amicable settlement of the question, lias remained 
another year unanswered, if not unnoticed." He thought there 
was no room for doubt or hesitancy as to the course which 
the general government ought to pursue. He observed that 
" national honor, as well as justice to Maine, clearly indicate 
it_and that is, to purge the soil of this State effectually, and 
without delay, of every vestige of British encroachment ; and 
then, if there is to be further negotiation upon this subject, let 
it be on the part of Great Britain to obtain what for more than 
a quarter of a century she has refused to yield. When a 
reasonable expectation can no longer be entertained that the 
general government will adopt this, or some equally efficacious 
course, if Maine is true to herself, she will take possession of 
the whole territory, and, if need be, use all the means which 
God and nature have placed in her hands to maintain it." 

Preferring to the exploration and survey which the general 
government had at last undertaken, and which were understood 
to have been nearly completed, he remarked that it was 
believed that it would " add a confirmation of our title which 
no ingenuity could avoid or effrontery deny." 

On the seventeenth of January, resolutions were passed in- 
structing our Senators to call on the President for information 
as to the state of negotiations, to which Mr. Webster replied 
that no correspondence had taken place which, in his judgment, 
could be made public without prejudice to the public interest. 

A joint-select committee, of which Hon. Edward Kavanagh 
was chairman, made a report on the seventh of March, in which 
liberal extracts from the Governor's message were copied, in- 
cluding those given herein, all of which received the full ap- 
proval of the committee and of the Legislature. But in considera- 
tion that it was understood a special minister had been appointed 
by Great Britain to visit Washington, with full power to con- 



THE NORTH-EASTEKN BOUNDARY. 87 

sider and adjust all questions in controversy, it was not deemed 
expedient at that time to do more than re-state the position of 
Maine ; in doing which the committee took care to say that 
" Maine, through her Legislature, has uniformly protested against 
an arbitration ; and we hazard nothing in saying that the people 
of this State will never consent that the inheritance derived 
from their ancestors be committed to such a hazard." 

On the eleventh of April, Mr. Webster wrote Governor Fair- 
field that Lord Ashburton, a Minister Plenipotentiary and 
Special, had arrived at Washington, with full powers to negoti- 
ate and settle the different matters in discussion between the 
two governments ; " that in regard to the boundary question he 
had authority to treat for a conventional line, or line by agree- 
ment, on such terms and conditions, and with such mutual 
considerations and equivalents, as may be thought just and 
equitable." He referred the Governor to the great losses of Maine 
in the Aroostook War, and to the fact that the United States 
had already paid one hundred thousand dollars towards an ex- 
ploration ; and, in contempt of the declaration of Mr. Kavanagh's 
committee, that Maine would never give her consent thereto, 
told him that if the case were not settled now it would go to 
another arbitration ! He then proposed that Maine and Massa - 
chusetts should appoint Commissioners, with authority to give 
the assent of those States to such a settlement as he and the 
British Plenipotentiary might agree upon ; and, to this end, 
that the Governor should convene the Legislature in special 
session, without unnecessary delay. 

In accordance with this request, the Legislature was convened 
by the Governor, at Augusta, on the eighteenth day of May, 1842. 

When the Legislature came together, they were informed by 
the Governor that " the British government is now prepared to 
propose * * * what may be thought to be a just and 



88 THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 

equitable equivalent for a portion of that which she has hereto- 
fore claimed as her own." He denounced any agreement for 
dividing the territory which did not afford an equivalent for the 
part that should be ceded to Great Britain. 

The question was debated with much spirit for several days. 
Hon. Peleg Sprague, of Boston, Judge of the United States 
District Court, formerly a Senator in Congress from Maine, 
visited Augusta as the representative of Mr. Webster, and had 
prolonged conferences with members of the Legislature, urging 
the appointment of Commissioners, with liberal powers ; and 
Mr. Jared Sparks, the historian, was mentioned, confidentially, 
by the knowing ones, as being at the Capital and holding pri- 
vate interviews with certain members of the Legislature. Hon. 
Albert Smith, a former member of Congress from this State, a 
gentleman of large influence, alike from his distinguished ability 
and his rare and genial humor, was also in attendance as an 
organ of the State Department. Measures for the preparation 
of public opinion for a conventional line were set on foot. 
Leading newspapers — religious as well as political — were in 
possession of new light and unwonted zeal upon this subject, to 
the extent, in some cases, of being able to see things that had been 
wholly obscured before — and the secret service fund of the State 
Department suffered a shrinkage, the details of which, if I remem- 
ber aright, Mr. Charles Jared Ingersoll, with all his pains, was 
never able to obtain. 

With all this effort, and notwithstanding the proposition was 
only for the appointment of Commissioners who, it was sup- 
posed, would make equivalents in kind as the conditions of any 
convention they might assent to, there was a respectable 
minority of the Legislature, who were inflexibly opposed to the 
appointment of Commissioners, upon any conditions. Some of 
them believed that the State had no rightful power to sell or 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 89 

transfer, for a consideration, any of its citizens. Mr. William 
Frye, of Bethel, a member of the committee to which the subject 
had been committed, made a minority report in maintenance of 
this position ; and I think there was not a member of either 
house who had a thought or fear that any convention would be 
entered into, under which, if the State surrendered land which 
was hers by the treaty of 1783, she would not receive territory 
in return, which was acknowledged to belong to New Bruns- 
wick. From the opportunity which I had of knowing the 
feeling and expectation of members— having myself been one of 
them — I believe I take no risk in saying that if it had been 
understood that any line would be agreed upon that should not 
give to Maine some portion of the acknowledged territory of 
New Brunswick, in exchange for what the latter should receive 
from Maine, the commission would never have been constituted. 
I do not believe it would have received ten votes in both houses. 
Indeed, one of the resolutions carried this idea, and it was 
supposed that it would be regarded as conveying an implied 
instruction, at least. It read as follows : 

"Resolved. That this State cannot regard the relinquishment, by 
the British government, of any claim heretofore advanced by it to 
territoiy included within the limits of the line of this State, as 
designated by the treaty of 1783, and uniformly claimed by Maine, 
as a consideration or equivalent, within the meaning of these reso- 
lutions." 

Four Commissioners — two from each political party — were 
appointed by the Legislature. William Pitt Preble and Edward 
Kavanagh represented the Democrats; Edward Kent and John 
Otis the Whigs. They proceeded without delay to Washington, 
and were there joined by Abbot Lawrence, John Mills and 
Charles Allen, Commissioners from Massachusetts. 

The assent of Maine to the treaty, which was literally wrung 



90 THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 

from her Commissioners, was given on the twenty-second of July, 
1842. Massachusetts had given hers two days before. One 
needs hut to read the paper in which that of Maine was con- 
veyed, or the report of the Commissioners to the Governor, to 
discover that it was only through moral duress of the represent- 
atives of Maine that the document was obtained. The grief 
and the shame of it were expressed in words which cannot be 
misunderstood. 

The Commissioners said : 

" Considering, then, this proposition as involving the surrender 
of more territory than the avowed objects of England require, as 
removing our landmarks from the well-known and well-defined 
boundary of the treaty of 1783, the crest of the highlands, besides 
insisting upon the line of the arbiter in its full extent, we feel 
bound to say, after the most careful and anxious consideration, that 
we cannot bring our minds to the conviction that the proposal is 
such as Maine had a right to expect. 

" But we are not unaware of the expectations which have been 
and still are entertained of a favorable issue to this negotiation by 
the government and people of this country, and the great disap- 
pointment which would be felt and expressed at its failure. Nor 
are we unmindful of the future, warned as we have been by the 
past, that any attempts to determine the line by arbitration may 
be either fruitless, or with a result more to be deplored." 

And so they consent to say that if the judgment of the nation 
shall demand the sacrifice, and the Senate of the United States 
shall advise and consent to it, their assent will not be withheld, 
although it will involve " a surrender of a portion of the birth- 
right of the people of their State, and prized by them because 
it is their birthright." 

The fact is, Mr. Webster was determined that the question 
should be settled at all events. He reasoned, he implored, he 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 91 

threatened. He had connected this question with others — 
questions which were indeed well settled by the terms of the 
treaty, and which the whole country was anxious to see settled 
— and thus had brought all these interests and influences to 
bear on the Maine Commissioners. New York was to get 
Kouse's Point ; there was the Caroline case ; the Creole case ; 
and the right of search ; the suppression of the slave trade on 
the coast of Africa — important matters, all, and all virtually 
and wisely adjusted by the treaty or by the correspondence 
and informal negotiations at the time. It was like the case of 
making a general appropriation bill carry an obnoxious measure. 
All these influences were brought into conspiracy against our 
Commissioners. The business interests of the country needed 
the assurance that there were to be no disturbances, no war — 
an almost solid South demanded that the question should be 
put at rest. For one, although I have never ceased to regret 
that the Commissioners yielded, I have not had it in my heart 
to find fault with them, knowing, not only from the public 
history of the affair, but also from many conversations with a 
prominent member of the Commission, the straits into which 
they were thrown and the force and character of the demands 
that were made upon them. 

In their letter to the Governor of Maine, in which they 
reported their doings as Commissioners, they complain that they, 
as well as the Legislature and people of the State, had been 
misled by the assurances which had been given in respect to 
the extent of the power intrusted to the British Plenipotentiary. 
" Instead," they say, " of being clothed with full power to nego- 
tiate a mutual exchange of contiguous territory for the purpose 
of removing the acknowledged inconveniences resulting from 
the treaty line of demarcation, we soon learned that he had no 
authority to concede a single acre of British territory adjoining 



92 THE NORTH-EASTEEN BOUNDARY. 

Maine — nay, not even the smallest of her islands in Passama- 
quoddy Bay." 

Nothing is more certain than this — that if the Governor 
had understood that the assurances made to him in the letter 
of the Secretary of State were unauthorized by anything in the 
instructions to the Minister, there would have been no special 
session of the Legislature. That this was the opinion of the 
Commissioners is manifest from their report. " The views 
of the Legislature," they say, " so repeatedly expressed, were 
opposed to any assent on the part of its agents," to a ratification 
of the line of the King of Holland. Yet the line of 1342 was 
less favorable to Maine than that. The pressure was such, 
however, that the consent of the State was finally given, on the 
condition, as the Commissioners inform the Governor, " that in 
the opinion of the Senate of the United States, Maine ought, 
under existing circumstances, to assent to so great a sacrifice of 
her just claims for the peace and harmony and general welfare 
of the Union." 

The ratification of the treaty was vigorously opposed in the 
Senate by Mr. Williams, of this State, Col. Benton, Mr. Buchanan, 
and others. Mr. Woodbury, of New Hampshire, criticised its 
provisions with much severity, but intimated that, since Maine 
had given her consent, he might not withhold his vote. 

Col. Benton's speech occupied several hours, in which he 
showed up, with a thoroughness that was as complete as it was 
merciless, its imperfections and inconsistencies, and incompat- 
ibility with the interests and honor of the nation. He spoke 
of Maine as having been "victimized" and betrayed. "And 
this," says he, " is her consent ! Pressed by the President of 
the United States, pressed by the American negotiator — men- 
aced — abandoned by her mother State — isolated from other 
States — presented as sole obstacle to the general peace — warned 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 93 

that it was the last chance ; thus situated, this devoted State so 
far subdues herself as to say, through her Commissioners, that 
she submits to the sacrifice if, upon mature consideration, the 
Senate of the United States shall approve it." He said that 
we surrendered our old natural mountain boundary, the crest of 
the highlands, to which we had clung with a religious perti- 
nacity from the beginning, and with it a strip of country one 
hundred and ten miles long, containing eight hundred and 
ninety-three square miles, beyond and above what was assigned 
to Great Britain by the King of Holland, and gave her the line 
she had contrived for the purpose of weakening our boundary 
and retiring it farther from Quebec. 

Mr. Buchanan argued the question in detail and at great 
length. He said : 

" I have earnestly endeavored to keep my mind open to convic- 
tion until the last moment ; but after all I cannot vote for this 
treaty without feeling that I had violated my duty to the country, 
and without forfeiting my own self-respect. In the emphatic lan- 
guage of the Senator from Maine (Mr. Williams) I believe it to be 
a treaty unjust to Maine, and dishonorable to the whole country ; 
and thus believing, if it depended upon my vote, it should be re- 
jected without regard to consequences." 

He said he concurred with the opinion formerly expressed by 
Mr. Webster, that the claim of the British government " does 
not amount to the dignity of a debatable question." He de- 
nounced Mr. Webster, as Col. Benton had clone, in terms of 
reproach, which would have had greater effect had they been 
less sweeping and had they not indicated that personal feeling 
may have had something to do with barbing them. "That 
man," he exclaimed, " of gigantic intellect, whose great powers 
ought to have been taxed to the utmost to save Maine from dis- 



94 THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 

memberment, was the very man who urged them (the Com- 
missioners) to consent to the dismemberment." 

But the speech which, perhaps, of all the speeches that were 
made, best reflected the attitude and feelings of Maine, w, 
her own Senator, Hon. Eeuel Williams ; it was dispassionate, 
clear, and dignified, but earnest and strong. While avoiding the 
language of vituperation, it did not conceal the impression 
that Maine had been misled into a position to which no power 
could have brought her with her eyes open and her hands free ; 
nor did it repress an expression of regret that the Commission- 
ers, when they found, in direct' conflict with their understand- 
ing of the facts, and that of the Legislature, that the British 
Minister had not full powers, had, indeed, no authority to cede 
an acre of British soil for any consideration whatever — and 
when limitations had been withheld from them, expressly on 
the ground that none were imposed on Lord Ashburton, and 
therefore that both sides should come together on the same 
footing — did not return at once, instead of remaining at Wash- 
ington to transfer the interest and the honor of the State from 
their own hands into the sole keeping of the Senate of the 
United States. Mr. Williams said : 

" I would go far, very far, to compromise this dispute upon 
honorable terms, and I would not be particular as to the value of 
equivalents. But I hold that Great Britain has contiguous terri- 
tory, convenient to us, which she might and ought to give in 
exchange for the territory belonging to us which she so much 
needs, and ought to have for a just equivalent. This treaty does 
not accomplish fairly either object ; it gives to Great Britain more 
than is necessary, and withholds from Maine what she ought to 
acquire." 

In closing, he said : 

" I cannot agree to the ratification of the present treaty. It is 



' THE NOBTH-E ASTERN BOUNDARY. 95 

unjust to Maine, and, in my judgment, dishonorable to the nation, 
I do not desire another arbitration, which may be more ruinous to 
Maine than the present arrangement. I have no confidence in 
further negotiation. What we have had has greatly weakened our 
once perfect title ; and I see no other waj r of getting our right as 
a nation and performing our high obligation to one of the States 
of the Union, than by taking possession of what belongs to us and 
holding it. In such a course we will have right and justice on our 
side. If others interfere with us, it must be in their own wrong. 
With these views, I send to the Chair the following resolution, 
and ask the yeas and nays upon its adoption : 

"Resolved, That the treaty and documents now under considera- 
tion be re-committed to the Committee on Foreign Relations, with 
instructions to report a resolution directing the President of the 
United States to take immediate possession of the disputed terri- 
tory, and to report such contingent measures as, in their opinion, 
may be necessary to maintain the just right of the nation." 

The resolution was not adopted. 

When the treaty was before the Senate, similar tactics to 
those which had been used in extracting the consent of the 
State of Maine to its provisions were employed. Mr. Jared 
Sparks, when in Paris, some time before the negotiation, had 
found in the archives of the French government an old map, 
with a red line, of this part of the country, a copy of which was 
furnished by him to the Secretary of State, and by the latter 
communicated to the Senate in executive session, with a nourish 
of trumpets, sounding not victory, but defeat, to the claims of 
the United States and of the State of Maine. The history of 
the discovery of this map is told by Mr. Sparks in his letter to 
Mr. Webster, from which I copy : 

"While pursuing my researches among the voluminous papers 
relating to the American Revolution in the Archives des Affaires 



96 THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 

Etrangers in Paris, I found in one of the bound volumes an orig- 
inal letter from Dr. Franklin to Count D'Vergennes, of which the 
following is an exact transcript : 

" « Passt, Dec. 6, 1782. 
" ' Sir : — I have the honor of returning herewith the map your 
Excellency sent me yesterday. I have marked with a strong red 
line, according to your desire, the limits of the United States, as 
settled in the preliminaries between the British and American 
plenipotentiaries. 

" With great respect, I am, &c, 

<"B. Franklin.' 

" This letter was written six days after the preliminaries were 
signed; and if we could procure the identical map mentioned by 
Franklin, it would seem to afford conclusive evidence as to the 
meaning affixed by the Commissioners to the language of the 
treaty on the subject of the boundary. You may well suppose that 
I lost no time in making enquiry for the map, not doubting that it 
would confirm all my previous opinions respecting the validity of 
our claims. In the geographical department of the archives are 
sixty thousand maps and charts, but so well arranged with cata- 
logues and indexes that any one of them may be easily found. 
After a little research in the American division, I came upon a map 
of North America, by D'Anville, dated 1746, in size about eighteen 
inches square, on which was drawn a strong red line throughout 
the entire boundary of the United States, answering precisely to 
Franklin's description. * Imagine my surprise on discover- 

ing that this line runs wholby south of the St. John, and between 
the head waters of that river and those of the Penobscot and Ken- 
nebec. In short, it is exactly the line now contended for by Great 
Britain, except that it concedes more than is claimed. * * There 
is no positive proof that this map is actually the one marked by 
Franklin ; yet, upon any other supposition, it would be difficult to 
explain the circumstances of its agreeing so perfectly with his 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 97 

description, and of its being preserved in the place where it would 
naturally be deposited by the Count D' Vergennes." 

Mr. Eives, of Virginia, a prominent member of the Com- 
mittee on Foreign Eelations, and I think its Chairman, intro- 
duced in the Senate this letter and the map which accompanied 
it — a copy of the original in the French archives, and which 
Mr. Sparks had marked with a black line — with these remarks : 

"Is there no danger, in the event of another arbitration, that a 
further research into the public archives of Europe might bring to 
light some embarrassing (even though apochryphal) document to 
throw a new shade of plausible doubt over the clearness of our title 
in the view of a sovereign arbiter ? Such a document has already 
been communicated to the committee, and I feel it to be my duty 
to lay it before the Senate, that they may fully appreciate its 
bearings and determine for themselves the weight and importance 
which belong to it." 

He adds, that it is due to Mr. Sparks, that an account of it in 
his own words, in a letter to the Secretary of State be given. 
Mr. Sparks' letter was then read. 

Here, then, was a brand new discovery, which one can scarcely 
conceive of as not fatal to our claim, if Mr. Sparks' inferences 
are to be relied upon, concealed from the other side, and sud- 
denly sprung upon the Senate in secret session, to influence its- 
action, and which, it may have well been supposed, would place 
the ratification of the treaty, notwithstanding the opposition of 
our Senator, Mr. Eeuel Williams, Col. Benton and others, be- 
yond much doubt. The treaty was indeed ratified, but not 
until the utter worthlessness of this evidence had been exposed 
by Col. Benton, Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Woodbury. This red- 
line map turned out to be no other than one of many red-line 
maps of 1746, one of which, from Mr. Jefferson's collection, had 
long been in the library of Congress, and had nothing whatever 
7 



98 ' THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 

to do with the map used by the Commissioners, or with that 
sent to the Count D'Vergennes. 

The question was brought up at the next session, also, when 
Col. Benton said (See Globe and Appendix for 1842-3, Vol. 12, 
p. Ill): " When he saw that the Senator from Virginia was 
yet in the act of pressing the importance of the map referred to 
by Mr. Sparks, he interrupted the Senator by calling, ' Here is 
the very same red line on Mr. Jefferson's map,' and on compari- 
son it was found to correspond exactly. He proclaimed the 
red line loudly to prove that Mr. Sparks' secret was no secret at 
all." 

This speech by Col. Benton was made on the fourth of 
January, 1843. Mr. Eives' speech, before quoted from, had 
just been published, the injunction of secrecy having been re- 
moved from the proceedings. Col. Benton took this occasion to 
correct some errors, as he considered them, in this speech. On 
the next day the question was brought up again, when Col. 
Benton said " there was not one particle of evidence to be ad- 
duced from the circumstance that the map, found by Mr. Sparks, 
in Paris, had a broad, strong red line indicating some boundary 
of Canada, was marked by Dr. Franklin ; because every French 
map of the day had the same red line on it." 

The fact seems to have been that this old French map, made 
nearly forty years before the treaty of 1783, indicated merely a 
French claim of boundary by just such a red line as was at that 
time commonly used. Besides, the fact that in 1794, when 
the subject was before the Commissioners, no such map or evi- 
dence of boundary was referred to, should have convinced Mr. 
Sparks that his version was not only untenable but preposterous. 
But the testimony, showing the utter failure, so far as the 
evidence was concerned, of this attempt to influence the Senate 
in favor of the treaty, was not permitted to be closed here. On 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 99 

the eighteenth of January, Col. Benton again brought the sub- 
ject before the Senate, when he produced a letter from Dr. 
Franklin, (the same already copied in this paper), dated the 
eighth of April, 1790, — and the last letter ever written by him 
— in which he says that the map used in tracing the boundary 
was brought to the treaty by the Commissioners from England, 
and that it was the same that was published by Mitchell twenty 
years before, and further, that the American Commissioners in- 
formed Congress of the fact at the time. 

These revelations exploded and scattered, one would have 
hoped, forever, this wretched red-line map performance. But 
this was not to be ; and years afterwards its echoes came to us 
from across the Atlantic. When, in 1861, the loyal country 
was engaged in an effort to preserve the nation, it received, as 
will be remembered, but small sympathy from the higher classes 
in England, who were eager enough to find grounds of indict- 
ment against the United States, and excuses for their own 
unfriendly feelings and actions. And among other explanations 
and excuses, they turned to this red-line map, took it up and 
threw it at us. The newspapers used it, the clubs talked about 
it, and one of the leading Quarterly Reviews, in an elaborate 
argument defending England's attitude of unfriendliness towards 
this country, referred, in justification, to the red-line map, its 
discovery, its concealment, its use in secret session of the 
Senate, and its exposition only after the treaty had been ratified, 
when the fraud had done its work too completely to be made in- 
effectual. This was not pleasant reading to us at that time, 
however groundless we knew the accusations to be; for we 
knew, also, that those to whom they were chiefly addressed — 
Englishmen, whom it was desired to see embittered against this 
country — did not know the facts, nor were they remembered 
by many even in our own country. The charge was well calcu- 



100 THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 

lated to do us harm, and was, as against the nation, -without a 
shadow of reason. Mr. Edward Everett, writing me on the 
twenty-eighth of February, 1862, said : " Of all the attempts in 
England to raise a prejudice against us, this clamor about the 
red-hue map is the most unjustifiable." 

Whatever of wrong there may have been in this transaction, 
it was wrong against the United States, and not against Eng- 
land. The latter had no right to complain of an expedient 
employed in her behalf, and that might open the way to the 
ratification of a treaty which, she was so desirous to have 
executed as this. The whole story being a fiction, or a mere 
inference that was plainly without foundation, no evidence 
tending to support the British claim had been suppressed. In- 
deed, it is more than probable, from the language of one of 
Lord Ashburton's letters to Mr. Webster, that he had seen this 
very map ; and he must have knowm, or he would have made 
other use of it, what it was designed to describe. This was 
shown quite clearly, I think, in the Senate debate on the ratifi- 
cation of the treaty. 

The treaty having been attacked by many individuals, and 
among others, by Senator Daniel S. Dickinson, of New York, 
Mr. Webster made what he called a " Vindication of the treaty 
of Washington," on the sixth and seventh days of April, 1846, 
in which no reference is made to any danger we escaped by the 
treaty, from the red-line map discovery. In truth, the red-line 
map theory never had the slightest respect in this country after 
Colonel Benton's speeches in 1843. 

The treaty line of 1842 commenced at the monument, at the 
source of the St. Croix, as agreed by the Commissioners under 
the treaty of 1794; thence it followed the exploring line that 
was run and marked by " the surveyors under the fifth article 
of the treaty of Ghent, to its intersection with the river St. 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 101 

John and to the middle channel thereof ; thence up the middle of 
the main channel of the said river St. John to the mouth of the 
river St. Francis " (to which point it is identical with the King 
of Holland's line) ; " thence up the middle channel of the said 
river St. Francis, and of the lakes through which it flows, to the 
outlet of Lake Pohenagamock ; thence south-westerly, in a 
straight line to a point on the north-west branch of the river 
St. John, which point shall be ten miles distant from the main 
branch of the St. John, in a straight line in the nearest direc- 
tion ; but if the said point shall be found to be less than seven 
miles from the nearest point of the summit or crest of the 
highlands that divide those rivers which empty themselves into 
the St. Lawrence, from those which fall into the river St. John, 
then the said point shall be made to recede down the said north- 
west branch of the river St. John, to a point seven miles in a 
straight line to said summit or crest; thence in a straight 
line, in a course about south, eight degrees west, to a point 
where the parallel of latitude of 46° 25' north intersects 
the south-west branch of the St. John ; thence southerly by 
the said branch, to the source thereof hi the highlands, at the 
Metxarmette portage ; thence down along the said highlands 
which divide the waters which empty themselves into the river 
St. Lawrence from those which fall into the Atlantic ocean, to 
the head of Hall's stream," etc. 

Comparing this boundary with the line of the King of Hol- 
land, it is painfully obvious how much the State of Maine lost 
by refusing to accept the latter, as she indignantly did, in 1831. 
Accepting that boundary, she would have saved in territory 
571,520 acres, or 893 square miles (see Mr. Webster's Vindica- 
tion), and would have received from the United States land in 
the State of Michigan, of the value of two millions of dollars. 



102 THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 

(See letter of the Maine Commissioners to Governor Fairfield, 
January 4, 1843.) 

Maine received from the United States, in the way of com- 
pensation for her assent to the treaty of Washington, the sum 
of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Had she acquiesced 
in the recommendation of the King of Holland, she would have 
saved to herself a tract of country (given up by the Ashburton 
treaty) as large as the counties of Androscoggin and Sagada- 
hoc and a good part of Lincoln, and have received, under 
General Jackson's proposition, in 1831, land of the value of two 
millions of dollars. 

But it may be said, she acquired the free navigation of the 
river St. John. It has already appeared, and was shown in the 
Senate debates, that by the law of nations she already possessed 
that right, and more fully, as Col. Benton argued, than was set 
down in the text of the treaty. But, waiving that point, she 
had it practically, and would have enjoyed it. For the interests 
of the city of St. John, and of the Province as a whole, would 
have placed it on a satisfactory and permanent basis. So large 
a proportion of the trade and commerce of that city depended 
upon the trade in the lumber and other products of north- 
eastern Maine, that the Province was under stronger than 
treaty obligations to yield, and even to facilitate, the use of the 
river for the transportation of these products by our people. 
But even the treaty, under the construction put upon it, became 
an embarrassment rather than a benefit. Instead of enjoying, 
under its provisions, the rights which the people of Maine had 
reasonably anticipated, they were restrained beyond all previous 
experience. The treaty, by its terms, excluded manufactured 
articles, and besides, contained the following clause : " When 
within the Province of New Brunswick, the said produce shall 
be dealt with as if it were the produce of said Province." 



THE NOETH-E ASTERN BOUNDARY. 103 

This was a most unfortunate clause ; for in virtue of it the 
Province assumed to collect, and in fact did collect, stumpage 
on lumber and timber cut in Maine, in the same manner and 
to the same extent that it would have done if they had been 
cut in New Brunswick. This is the way in which it was 
effected. New Brunswick levied an export duty, in lieu of 
stumpage, on all lumber and timber cut in the Province on 
which stumpage was due thereto, and as by the treaty, the 
lumber and timber cut in Maine were to be dealt with, when 
within the Province, as if they were the produce of the latter, 
and since she levied an export duty on her own, she had, she 
maintained, the same right to levy it on that which came from 
Maine. She did levy it and collect it. Making the duty high 
enough to include her claims for stumpage, it covered, of course, 
stumpage on the lumber and timber from the State. She col- 
lected no other stumpage. But a Maine lumberman, who had 
paid stumpage to the State, or to the proprietor at home, was 
compelled to pay it again to the Province. Having lost her 
pretended title to the soil, she yet contrived to hold and treat 
its growth and products as her own. When earnest remon- 
strance was made against this extortion and abuse of the treaty, 
she only replied that the right was given by it and would be 
exercised. And it was exercised until the treaty of Washington, 
in 1871, when the right to tax American produce in transit to 
an American market was taken away. 

To the consideration, so urgently and so unceasingly pressed 
upon the people of Maine, that the treaty as a whole was ad- 
vantageous to the United States, and their State should there- 
fore be willing to set aside her single interest and her sentiment 
in deference to the general good, they always could answer, 
that she had never been unready to do her duty to the Union — 
that she had been patient under injury and indignity from a 



104 THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 

foreign power, such as had been visited upon no other State ; 
and this, too, when she had occasion to feel that her rights 
were neglected, and, as at thnes it almost seemed, betrayed by 
the national government, her constitutional protector. And 
they remembered, and could further answer, that there had been 
times and opportunities when a just and reasonable arrangement 
could have been effected, if the authorities at Washington had 
been as mindful of her interests and honor as they had never 
failed to be of smaller concerns affecting other interests and 
other sections of the country ; that a line from near the monu- 
ment at the head of the St. Croix to Eel Eiver ; thence to its 
outlet in the river St. John, some twelve miles below the town 
of Woodstock ; thence up the rivers St. John and St. Francis to 
the crest of the highlands ; thence following the line recom- 
mended by the King of Holland — was so well understood at one 
time as being attainable, that large purchases of real estate were 
made in the neighborhood of and above Eel river, upon the 
advice of parties at Washington, who enjoyed the very best 
means of knowing what might have been and was expected to 
be accomplished. 

This State well understood that Great Britain regarded the 
right of way across the Madawaska country as a prime con- 
venience, if not as a positive necessity ; and she was never 
unwilling, with the consent of the people residing there (and 
which for many years there would have been no difficulty in 
obtaining), to cede to her so much of the territory as was 
needed for this purpose, and would have been content with a 
reasonable equivalent for so considerable a concession. That 
Great Britain overestimated the importance of this right of way, 
has been manifest from her subsequent action. She has practi- 
cally acknowledged it, by insisting that the railway which she 
has aided in constructing, that connects Halifax and St. John 



THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 105 

with Quebec and Montreal, should be built upon a route east 
of the boundary line as always claimed by Maine. 

Nor is it quite easy for this State to forget that the more 
valuable the considerations moving to the United States in the 
frontier changes of boundary in the country west of Maine, the 
larger were the sacrifices to which she was called to submit. 
For these better boundaries in the west something was neces- 
sary to be paid, and it fell to the lot of Maine to make the 
payment from territory to which Congress had declared her 
title to be " clear and unquestionable." 

For this large and uncalled for surrender of her soil, Maine 
sought no money equivalent. She only sought compensation in 
kind — land for land — privilege for privilege. She always re- 
fused to treat the question as one of pecuniary indemnity. 
When, in 1831, she was asked to accept the line of the King of 
Holland, and receive Michigan lands of the value of two 
millions of dollars, she promptly, as has been seen, and not 
without a feeling of just indignation, rejected the terms, regard- 
ing them as unjust and derogatory. And when, in 1842, her 
boundaries were so largely abridged, she declined to remember, 
as against the miserable douceur with which she was then put 
off, the greater compensation which she had spurned ten years 
before. 

There is no fact in the history of Maine, in which I take 
greater satisfaction than this — that, while feeling keenly the in- 
justice done to her, when once the sacrifice became inevitable, 
she was too proud to higgle about the price. 

The story which I have here so imperfectly told, honorable 
as it is to the people of Maine, and for the most part creditable 
to her authorities, forms an interesting and important chapter 
in her annals, and if it be true, as we are told, that history is 



106 THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY. 

philosophy teaching by example, it is one that may be read 
with interest and profit by the present and by future genera- 
tions. 



CORRECTION. 

In Section II, on page 15, it is said: "The Commissioners 
having agreed upon the river, decided that its source was in 
what is now known as Round Lake, the same, I suppose, that 
is laid down as North Lake in Greenleafs map of 1815," &c. 
This is a mistake. The Round Lake which the Commissioners 
first agreed upon was the lowest of the western Schoodic Lakes. 
It had been claimed by the British agent as the true head of 
the St. Croix, in an elaborate argument based upon the belief 
that it would give a line to the highlands so far to the west of 
one starting from Lake Cheputnecook, as to leave the sources 
of the rivers that fall into the Bay of Chaleurs within British 
territory. But no sooner had he discovered that this was an 
error, than he took steps to have the branch of the St. Croix, 
against which he had been earnestly contending, adopted as the 
true river. He seems to have had no difficulty in bringing about 
this change. The "bad luck" in this case must be largely 
ascribed to the ignorance of the American Commissioners. 

There seems to have been, at first, a misunderstanding on 
both sides, as to the effect of their respective claims. But the 
British agent was soonest undeceived. 

The line claimed by this agent, as originally understood and 
contended for by him, would indeed have set aside "the plain 
provisions of the treaty and its undisputed history." But as it 
would have been run, it would have taken from New Brunswick 
a strip of country ten miles wide by one hundred and fifty miles 
in length. See letter of Robert Listen to Ward' Chipman, 
October 23, 179 S. 

At all events, the British appear to have had their own way 
before the Commissioners. When they asked for Round Lake, 
they received it ; and when they wanted Cheputnecook, they 
had no difficulty in getting it. 
[To face p. 106.] 



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